As the U.S. economy continues its slow but steady march into economic depression, the Obama obsession with taxing millionaires and billionaires continues.  Consider, Obama Tax Plan Would Ask More of Millonaires.

President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicaid.

Mr. Obama’s proposal is certain to draw opposition from Republicans, who have staunchly opposed raising taxes on the affluent because, they say, it would discourage investment. It could also invite scrutiny from some economists who have disputed Mr. Buffett’s assertion that the megarich pay a lower tax rate over all, because many in that group actually make more from wages than from investments.

In a speech on Thursday, Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, agreed with Mr. Obama that the deficit-reduction committee “can tackle tax reform, and it should,” to get rid of many tax breaks and allow for lower marginal rates.  “Tax increases, however, are not a viable option for the joint committee,” Mr. Boehner said. Instead, he emphasized that meeting the deficit-reduction target should come largely from overhauling benefit programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

The Obama proposal has little chance of becoming law unless Republican lawmakers bend. But by focusing on the wealthiest Americans, the president is sharpening the contrast between Republicans and Democrats with a theme he can carry into his bid for re-election in 2012.

Does the latest Obama tax proposal have merit or is it simply an attempt to capture votes based on a class warfare strategy?  Half of all American households already pay zero income tax and the top 5% of Americans by income already pay 60% of all income taxes.   As pointed out by the Wall Street Journal, there is No Easy Answer On Tax Issue.

“We’re approaching nearly half of the United States population that doesn’t pay any income taxes,” Mr. Perry said in Iowa, when asked about combating an “entitlement culture” in the U.S. “And I think one of the ways is to let everybody, as many people as possible…be able to be helping pay for the government that we have in this country.” In Nashua, N.H., Mr. Romney hit a similar theme: “We want to make sure people do pay their fair share.”

Of the poorest 20% of American households, those earning less than $16,812 a year, 93.4% pay no income tax. But even 30% of the middle class earning between $33,542 and $59,386 are exempt. Some Republican economists say the tax policies that cause this phenomenon have gone too far, contending that people who don’t pay income taxes have an incentive to support politicians who promise more federal programs, since they aren’t paying for them.

Moreover, they argue the tax code has become too dependent on too few people. Sixty percent of the income tax is paid by 5% of U.S. households, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who led domestic policy for John McCain’s 2008 campaign. “We’re going to have to have tax reform,” he said. “The system is broken.”

The U.S. tax code is a disgrace from every aspect but the odds of it being reformed by a deeply divided Congress are zero.  Taxes on all income groups have been too low to cover massive government spending programs and the result is a debt crisis that threatens the solvency of the Nation.  Our political leaders have promised unaffordable benefits to a vast array of constituents and paid for it by maxing out the Nation’s credit limits.

Ultimately, a solution to the Nation’s looming insolvency will require not only dramatic reductions of promised benefits but also large tax increases across all income levels.

A miffed President Obama instructed his aides to quickly come up with another 114 proposals to add to his major jobs speech before Congress.  After hearing that Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney rolled out an economic plan with 59 proposals for creating jobs, the President reportedly told aides “Nobody beats me on fresh ideas for creating jobs.  I have twice as many ideas as Romney and I will create twice as many jobs”.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the President thinks about jobs all the time and even spent a few days while on vacation brainstorming with economic advisers on the unemployment problem.   “This is just typical dirty politics by the opposition to detract from the President’s upcoming jobs speech - there is no reason that Romney couldn’t have waited another couple of days” Carney told reporters.

Carney also belittled Romney’s proposals for creating 11.5 million new jobs, saying that his plan relied too much on private industry.  “Everyone knows that the private sector is firing American workers so that they can be replaced with cheap foreign workers - only the Government can create good high paying jobs and Romney just doesn’t understand this” said Carney.

Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said that even if Romney’s plan created new jobs, it would just “boost oil company profits…give more tax breaks to large corporations and more tax cuts for the wealthiest.”

When pressed for details on what new ideas Obama would reveal in his jobs speech, Carney said “You are just going to have to wait, but don’t forget, the President is an old hand at creating jobs.  His stimulus programs have created over 4 million jobs according to the Congressional Budget Office.  If not for the President’s creative solutions, the unemployment rate would have been 18%.  That’s something people just don’t think about.”

World financial markets are imploding, unemployment is at depression levels, the economy is slipping into recession and the world banking system is beginning to collapse.  Who in the world would want to tackle this mess instead of going on vacation?

Obama playing golf with wealthy pals in Martha’s Vineyard while the country is spiraling down the drain has provided critics with a big fat target and they are zeroing in.

The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan had some harsh words for the poor timing and ironic symbolism of the Presidential vacation.   Obama’s retreat to his summer island while the country falls apart leads Noonan to argue that nothing has worked for Obama and he is basically giving up.

He has made big mistakes since the beginning of his presidency and has been pounded since the beginning of his presidency. He’s got to be full of doubts at this point about what to do. His baseline political assumptions have proved incorrect, his calculations have turned out to be erroneous, his big decisions have turned to dust. He thought they’d love him for health care, that it was a down payment on greatness…He thought the stimulus would turn the economy around. It didn’t. He thought there would be a natural bounce-back a year ago, with “Recovery Summer.” There wasn’t. He thought a toe-to-toe, eyeball-to-eyeball struggle over the debt ceiling would enhance his reputation. The public would see through to the dark heart of Republican hackery and come to recognize the higher wisdom of his approach. That didn’t happen either.

Nothing worked! And nothing’s going to work.

Mr. Obama shouldn’t be faulted for wanting to rest, relax and spend whole days with his family. But the timing of this vacation is incongruent, and so is the location.

On the timing, there’s an air of economic crisis hanging over everything, a sense that other shoes may drop. Actually it’s a sense of something impending, with unemployment high, Europe broke and the Mideast reaching full boil. A politician who wanted to impart a sense of leadership in crisis, who passionately wanted to keep the presidency, and who was prudently anxious about his prospects just might let such a moment change his plans.

Noonan might have added that taking a vacation while the country is falling apart shows a horrific lack of common sense and concern.  I can see the campaign ads already - Obama teeing off while a split screen shows a graph of collapsing financial markets and soaring unemployment.  This vacation could become symbolic of Obama’s entire presidency.

courtesy politco.com

courtesy - apocepoch.blogspot.com

While Obama continues to blame everyone and everything for the country’s economic ruin, people wonder what happened to Obama.   The answer, according to Norman Podhoretz is “absolutely nothing.”

In short, the spell that Mr. Obama once cast—a spell so powerful that instead of ridiculing him when he boasted that he would cause “the oceans to stop rising and the planet to heal,” all of liberaldom fell into a delirious swoon—has now been broken by its traumatic realization that he is neither the “god” Newsweek in all seriousness declared him to be nor even a messianic deliverer.

Hence the question on every lip is—as the title of a much quoted article in the New York Times by Drew Westen of Emory University puts it— “What Happened to Obama?”

To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) “non-threatening,” all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?

And so it came about that a faithful scion of the political culture of the ’60s left is now sitting in the White House and doing everything in his power to effect the fundamental transformation of America to which that culture was dedicated and to which he has pledged his own personal allegiance.

I disagree with those of my fellow conservatives who maintain that Mr. Obama is indifferent to “the best interests of the United States” (Thomas Sowell) and is “purposely” out to harm America (Rush Limbaugh). In my opinion, he imagines that he is helping America to repent of its many sins and to become a different and better country.

But I emphatically agree with Messrs. Limbaugh and Sowell about this president’s attitude toward America as it exists and as the Founding Fathers intended it. That is why my own answer to the question, “What Happened to Obama?” is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.

Let hapless Obama and a destructive Congress take their vacations without criticism.   Americans will enjoy a well deserved vacation from their imperial rulers.  After spending us into oblivion and passing enough regulations to permanent choke the economy, America needs a break from both Congress and the president.  Give them double their pay if necessary and put them on permanent vacation.  The country, freed of President and Congress, will eventually heal itself.

It’s a routine event to be excoriated by your enemies - you laugh it off and consider the source.  When harsh criticism comes from your friends, however, it should be a wake up call to reassess positions.

Barrick Obama’s wake up call came when Steve Wynn, CEO of Wynn Resorts recently let loose some very harsh criticism on Obama’s job performance and “weird political philosophy”.  Steve Wynn is a giant business presence in Las Vegas and has built and run a large number of casinos including the Wynn, Encore, Golden Nugget and Treasure Island.  Wynn’s business skills and determination have resulted in creating thousands of jobs and wealth.  Wynn knows business and he knows how to create jobs.  He is exactly the type of man who should be consulted for his advice on guiding the country out of depression levels of unemployment.

Unfortunately, the president spends most of his time demonizing wealthy businessmen for a litany of transgressions including not paying enough taxes.  The White House’s disdain for free enterprise has not escaped the notice of the country’s job creators.  In a conference call to investors, Steve Wynn lamented that businesses are being demoralized and paralyzed due to socialistic government policies.

Wynn said  that the “Obama administration is the greatest wet blanket to business and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I could prove it…I could spend the next three hours giving you examples of all of us in this marketplace that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right, and a President that keeps using that word redistribution.”

Wynn also mentioned that he is a Democrat and a friend of Harry Reid, but “I am telling you that the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. Until he is gone, everybody is going to be sitting on [his] thumbs”.

Wynn also said that Obama is “responsible for this fear in America. The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and [the need] to do something to businesses that don’t invest, that are holding too much money. You know, we haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody is afraid of the government and there is no need soft-pedaling it. It is the truth. It is the truth.”

And right on cue, Obama today confirmed Wynn’s worst fears.  Although unemployment has been at crisis levels in this country for three years, Obama has ignored the problem other than occasional lip service to the issue.   In an announcement proclaiming a new push for job creation today, the President came up woefully short on ideas.  The “new job initiatives” announced involve extending unemployment benefits and the social security tax cut, proving Wynn’s contention that Obama, as a socialist, does not understand or embrace free enterprise.  More social benefits merely transfers wealth from workers to non workers.  These initiatives would be underwritten with borrowed money, deepening the debt crisis.  Wynn is correct - until Obama is gone from office, the nation’s economic woes are certain to worsen.

It’s time for a change.

The Alien Amongst Us

Two years into his presidency Mr. Obama seems unable to connect with the average American on something as fundamental as his birthplace and religious beliefs.  According to Pew Research, an overwhelming number of Americans (61%) either don’t know what religion he follows or believe that he is a Muslim.  Mr. Obama’s disconnect to the average American has been noted previously, as reflected by his plunge in approval ratings (see Obama’s Approval Ratings Plunge).

The poll on Mr. Obama’s religion was conducted prior to his recent strong endorsement for building a mosque on Ground Zero in Manhattan, leading to the expectation that future polls will show further confusion about the President’s core beliefs and background.  Mr. Kohut, president of Pew Research, stated that “People have told us consistently that they want religious politicians.  I think it’s an important element of how people see him, how he’s viewed personally.”

Doubts On Obama's Fundamental Beliefs

Where Was The President Born?

Another indication of the President’s lack of credibility with the public are CNN poll results that show a startling 27% of Americans doubt that Mr. Obama was born in the United States.  Questions regarding Mr. Obama’s birthplace persist despite the posting of Obama’s birth certificate on the Internet  by his staff during the election campaign.  Mr. Obama’s recent strong support for a Muslim mosque to be built next to Ground Zero victims in Manhattan is only likely to enhance the public perception that Mr. Obama’s views are alien to American culture.

The public doubts on Mr. Obama’s birthplace and religion may be completely misguided, but speaks volumes for Mr. Obama’s inability to honestly let us know who he is and what he actually believes in.  In the final analysis, Mr. Obama’s fundamental problem is the fact that the public is beginning to feel extremely uncomfortable about their President.