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The Obama Watch
The Three (Ways of Making Us) Stooges
What about our president’s vaunted intelligence, morality, and honesty?
Fans of Barack Obama are impressed with his ability to do two or three things at one time, as am I. Here is a classic twofer: he succeeded in exposing both the intellectual inadequacy and the moral bankruptcy of his worldview in one terse statement. As a bonus he threw in an example of his deceitful manipulativeness.
This came in his recent press conference when he was asked to defend his proposal to reduce the maximum deductibility of charitable donations to 28 percent. Under his proposed regime, someone who pays 39 cents in taxes on each earned dollar would only receive 28 cents off his total tax bill for each dollar contributed to the poor.
Here is the President’s explanation:
And what we’ve said is: Let’s go back to the rate that existed under Ronald Reagan. People are still going to be able to make charitable contributions. It just means, if you give $100 and you’re in this tax bracket, at a certain point, instead of being able to write off 36 percent or 39 percent, you’re writing off 28 percent.
Now, if it’s really a charitable contribution, I’m assuming that that shouldn’t be the determining factor as to whether you’re giving that $100 to the homeless shelter down the street.
And so this provision would affect about 1 percent of the American people. They would still get deductions. It’s just that they wouldn’t be able to write off 39 percent.
In that sense, what it would do is it would equalize — when I give $100, I’d get the same amount of deduction as when some — a bus driver who’s making $50,000 a year, or $40,000 a year, gives that same $100. Right now, he gets 28 percent — he gets to write off 28 percent. I get to write off 39 percent. I don’t think that’s fair.
So I think this was a good idea. I think it is a realistic way for us to raise some revenue from people who’ve benefited enormously over the last several years.
Now let’s measure these remarks by the three standards indicated earlier: intelligence, morality and honesty.
In terms of intelligence, as limned by reasonableness and logic, this is completely cockeyed. He is saying it is not fair for a rich person to save 39 cents of tax per charity dollar while a middle-class person only saves 28. The fallacy is obvious. The idea of charity being deducted is the notion that the society is being helped by direct action in a way which obviates the need for taxation.
Take that homeless shelter down the street. It receives some of its dollars from citizens, some from the government. There is no point in the government taking part of your dollar to give to the homeless shelter when you are prepared to give it the entire dollar.
Thus it is not true to say the dollar you give to the shelter is untaxed. On the contrary, it is taxed at the rate of 100 percent, a taxation to which you have submitted voluntarily. At this point, government has no interest in blocking your transaction, since you are achieving the same charitable end without its intervention.
If a man in a 39 percent tax bracket gives that dollar and we only allow him a 28 cent deduction, we are de facto taxing him at a rate of 111%. In essence, he has to write the government an eleven-dollar check to give the homeless shelter in order to get permission to give his hundred dollars to the same shelter. This is fairness… on which planet?
If anything, the argument could be advanced the other way. Since the 28 percent guy is voluntarily taxing himself 72 cents beyond the government requirement while the richer guy is only adding 61 to his obligation, the former should get 11 cents off his next dollar’s tax.
NOW TO MORALITY. Clearly, what propels this illogic is a sense that a person exercising disposition of his own philanthropy is a usurper, an interloper, an underminer of government as the sapient determiner of need. Who is this private bozo to say this widow should rather be helped than that orphan? It is best left to government as impersonal arbiter of fate and collector of vital statistics to apportion benefits based on its assessment of social equity.
About the Author
Jay D. Homnick, commentator and humorist, is a frequent contributor to The American Spectator. He also writes for Human Events. Here he speaks at the Rally for Religious Freedom in Miami on June 8, 2012.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (42) | Leave a comment
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Country Boy| 4.1.09 @ 7:26AM
Good read - thanks!
On a good day, zeroBoy is a bad three card monte dealer. How did we ever get so many people stuck on stupid in this country.
Pingback| 4.1.09 @ 7:46AM
The American Spectator : The Three Ways of Making Us Stooges « Aeronaut links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Don L| 4.1.09 @ 8:20AM
I suspect that you missed another variable. Dollars taken by the government, in order to reach that charity, must first be filtered through the multiple levels of government that, like cancer, have grown to actually cutting off efficency. When three dollars of tax only return one, or when the benovolent government sends the state back some of its citizens confiscated money to do what they say is a civic good, it first consumes much of that same money that the private sector gives directly.
Robert Rosencrans| 4.1.09 @ 9:37AM
Over 80 cents of every dollar filtered through government stays with the bureaucracies in terms of employee benefits, pay and infrastructure. Private charities and not-for-profit entities are much more efficient.
Obama is beyond Scrooge on this one. While the Treasury Department squanders trillions on Dead Companies Walking like AIG, Obama wants to take a brick bat to organizations that desire to aid others in distress.
Obama appears to be an expert at organizing community failure.
Becky| 4.1.09 @ 9:56AM
Robert and Don hit on as aspect I have found missing in the President's logic, that is the voluntary aspect of giving time, talents, and money that many people already do. Donating time has not been deductible, yet an important part of many charities work.
What he is proposing is United Way on steroids. I hardly gave when they used to come to the office, because I already consistently gave and supported organizations I liked. I thought they were just middle men I didn't need. The United Way/Boy Scout flap didn't help my opinion either.
Howard| 4.1.09 @ 10:17AM
In the Socialist states in western Europe, the government provides those services, albeit, from people paying very high rates of taxation. Obama as a Socialist/Communist wants to achieve the same. One additional benefit would be starving religion. Since this is also part of that worldview, sauce for the goose for Obama and company.
Lee Schafer| 4.1.09 @ 11:16AM
Country boy ask "how did we ever get so many people stuck on stupid in this country"
That's easy to answer: 1) A main stream media that has sold out to the leftist in this country. The free press no longer protects the people from government but actually drives the people into the arms of government. No difference between what NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, Wash Post have been doing for the last 8 years than what Pravda did for the USSR for 70 years and Goebbels did for Hitler. American MSM is the propaganda machine for the democrat party. When 57% of Obama voters don't even know what party controls the congress, but 87% of them knew that Sarah Palin had a pregnant teen age daughter and spent $150,000 on her wardrobe, this alone should disqualify the MSM from ever being considered reliable on any matter.
2) A public education system that no longer teaches students to be independent thinkers, but fills them full of political correctness and environmental garbage. Our school system no longer teaches free market concepts but glorifies the socialistic systems that enslaves people while making sure they have free health care.
Michele San Pietro| 4.1.09 @ 11:38AM
"Our president"? Obama is not my president and never will be!
Nolanimrod | 4.1.09 @ 11:42AM
The motivation here is rather plain: the same as was Al Capone's. Snuff out the competition. Additionally, during the welfare heyday 10¢ of every dollar actually got to a welfare recipient. Guess where the rest went.
Big Leo| 4.1.09 @ 11:46AM
I serve on the board of a halfway house I helped found about twenty years ago. Now, we expect to be in financial trouble, since almost half of the donations that support us come from people who are over the income limit and already are experiencing a lowered financial worth because of the stock market.
Obama's blather about a $100 donation is totally dishonest. The big donor doesn't give $100, he gives $100,000. Now this will cost him $128,000 instead. The big givers often give MOST of their income to charity. This is a 28% tax on our charitable budget, nothing less. I've been involved in charitable institutions professionally for over forty years, and this coming year is shaping up to be the worst. If we have to close our doors, I will know exactly who to blame.
Bill| 4.1.09 @ 11:52AM
Well stated Lee
Marc Jeric| 4.1.09 @ 12:39PM
Abu Hussein from Kenya, our Community Organizer-in-Chief, with his ACORN brownshirts is hastily communizing our country - you know "a good crisis should not be wasted". With the coming 11% unemployment and 13% inflation, spurred on by the marxist hordes in our universities and Main Stream Media, we have yet to see the worst.
Dennis| 4.1.09 @ 1:24PM
I suspect obama's motive is twofold. First is to reduce charitable donations from private citizens, in favor of making government the sole source of "charity" in the US, in the same way he seeks to make the government the sole source of health care. Second is to reduce, even eliminate the church, any church or "faith-based initiative" from the role of financial caregiver to the needy. Simply put, he seeks to make the state the official church of his US, government the official religion, a la the USSR, Cuba, Cambodia, etc. For this goal to be met, we all must become equally needy, as the tax "reforms" will guarantee over time.
D Markland| 4.1.09 @ 3:36PM
If it is ufair for someone to get 39% back from a donation how is it "fair" for him to have 39% of his wages confiscated while others pay almost nothing?
JP| 4.1.09 @ 3:37PM
I think a thousand bloggers and OpEd writers picked up on the President's twisted logic. In Obama's mind, the only authentic charity is the kind that is forced upon an individual via the US Tax Code. In that case, of course, it isn't charity.
For a man with such a celebrated CV (Columbia, Haravard Law), President Obama's forray into moral philosophy is about as shallow as his forray into economics. He should stick to his teleprompter.
Big Leo| 4.1.09 @ 3:43PM
"If it is ufair for someone to get 39% back from a donation how is it "fair" for him to have 39% of his wages confiscated while others pay almost nothing?"
Be careful, D. You're falling into their trap. The person who gives a hundred thousand dollars doesn't get anything back under the current plan. He just doesn't have to pay in 39% more to IRS as a tax on his generosity.
Michael Tomlinson| 4.1.09 @ 5:31PM
Maybe the best way to respond to Barack Obama's miserly policy is for conservatives to follow his example and do the Al Gore and stop donating to charities all together. I'm sure the liberals who control charitable institutions and voted for Obama will understand and appreciate the willingness to be more like Barack.
Revelations 3 vs 9| 4.1.09 @ 6:29PM
Evil can only survive when good men do nothing.
America run by institution, for institutions.
The Government can only make fools out of you while you allow them to.
Look! I will give those from the SYNAGOGUE of Satan who say they are JEW and yet they are not but are lying-look! I will make them come and do obeisance before your feet, and make them know I have always loved you.
That is what the Bible says, but the false prophets says the people in Israel are the chosen ones chosen by who? Satan the DEVIL.
Mike| 4.1.09 @ 7:31PM
It is hard to know whether Obama was advancing an intentionally duplicitous argument or just naively kicking around his latest mind-blowing idea like a pompous over-stimulated college freshman.
Either way, the man is truly scary.
Tim| 4.1.09 @ 7:39PM
He gave the queen an I Pod?
Why not a basketball to the queen's husband?
My teen age son laughed for five minutes when I told him that. He didn't believe me until he heard it on the news.
My teen age son who is no conservative right wing zeolot......was stunned at such a display of such a classless and tasteless gift to give the queen on their first official visit.
That pretty much says it all.......
Angel| 4.1.09 @ 8:02PM
The Queen already has an IPod. Oh, I see--the second IPod from the Obamas is for the Queen when she trains for Marathons. How embarrassing.
Big Leo| 4.1.09 @ 8:02PM
When I heard that he gave the queen an ipod I laughed out loud. What a great story for April Fool's Day! Then I found out it was true. A gift so tasteless that it deeply offended a teenager. . . there's a concept. And of course, it nicely complements the gift of unplayable DVD's to the PM. The only reason I can think of for these incredibly stupid choices is that he was given a gift card at Walmart for Christmas.
Cow Rie| 4.1.09 @ 9:09PM
So everyone here is critical of Obama.
What are YOU going to do about it?
It is time to act.
Roman Melnyk| 4.1.09 @ 9:36PM
Where is the press on this? Or do they not speak math?
Angel| 4.1.09 @ 9:56PM
I'm sorry, Big Leo. I hope you can keep your doors open this year.
Seymour Kleerly| 4.1.09 @ 10:03PM
I could not get past your first paragraph where you described Obama as decietful and manipulative. Did you ever use terms like this for Bush during his eight years of deciept and manipulation of this country? Or are you a propagandist who thinks we're all dumb?
Frosty| 4.1.09 @ 10:19PM
No, he's not a propagandist; but yes, he does think you're dumb. So do I. Hey, you wanna a IPod, Queenie? Dang, the Obamas are lowlife rubes.
Pingback| 4.1.09 @ 10:55PM
Obama - Morally Bankrupt | Patriotic Dissent links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Ken Roberts | 4.5.09 @ 2:10PM
Big Leo , I feel for you and your organization as I know you have helped more people then can be counted. Bless you and the givers , it is to bad that we have to have a jester and a crook in the white house today. The real shame of all of this is that Obama and his cabinet believe this stuff they are spewing out . And they have used double speak for so long they can't tell an honest statement from a dishonest one.
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