The Razor

Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: Joshuapundit–-Heart Of Darkness; Obama’s Campaign To Make Israel A Scapegoat And Fool America’s Jews

Noncouncil: AnDrew McCarthy- Fears And Smears

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Some of the responses I have seen to Operation Fast and Furious attempt to portray those who support the right to bear arms as being paranoid about the government’s sending guns to the Mexican drug cartels. CBS News has documents proving that the ATF used the secret government program to justify ATF demands for laws covering multiple gun sales.

This is the rough equivalent of burglarizing houses in a neighborhood to boost burglar alarm system sales.

We aren’t being paranoid. The federal government sent arms to the drug cartels to undermine a right explicitly set in the Constitution.

Somebody needs to be fired – and then jailed. This is the United States not Russia.

UPDATE: John Hinderaker from Powerline weighs in with the ultimate question to President Obama:

(W)hy in the world did the Obama administration not just allow AK-47s and other weapons to be shipped across the border to Mexican drug gangs, but encourage and even finance such transactions, over the objections of jittery gun shop owners and its own veteran agents? If the Obama administration wasn’t trying to set up an argument for more gun control, then what was it trying to do? That question has never been answered.

As I have said before, as a kid I watched the Watergate hearings after school instead of cartoons. Later in college I watched the Iran-Contra hearings instead of getting drunk with my friends. Now I’m watching the Fast and Furious hearings and without a doubt, Fast and Furious stands out as the worst scandal of the three. Why? Because no one died from Watergate.

Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: Joshuapundit–-Rats in the Kitchen: A Parable

Noncouncil: The Passing Parade- OWS IT GOING, AND IT SHOULD GO FASTER

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Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: Joshuapundit–-Egypt Explodes

Noncouncil: American Thinker- Islam Was Not For Me

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Council: The Noisy Room–-Book Burning – It’s All The Rage

Noncouncil: Gates Of Vienna- “An Iron Burka Has Descended Across the Continent”

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Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: Joshuapundit–-War Drums On Iran?

Noncouncil: Raymond Ibrahim- Muslim Prayers Of Hate

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Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: Joshuapundit–-President Obama’s Latest Horror – A Trillion Dollar Timebomb For America’s Economy

Noncouncil: Gates Of Vienna- Slavery And Jihad

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Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: Bookworm Room –-Is it true that the poor ye always have with you?

Noncouncil: FrontPage Magazine– - Obama’s Libyan Disaster

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The older I get the more I recognize patterns in daily life, whether they are of parents repeating the same things they heard as children or politicians making promises that only sound new to people under 40. It seems that the words stay the same, only the speakers change – as if life has a finite set of scripts for a limited number of roles. If the patterns are obvious to me in middle age, I can’t help but wonder how the elderly feel. They must be bored senseless from hearing the same crap over and over again.

As I watch President Obama’s bubble of importance shrink around him, I wonder whether he appreciates the future that lays before him. Jimmy Carter should be falling off his perch any day now, but when he does he can die knowing that his role of playing “Misunderstood, Unappreciated Genius President” will soldier on long after he bumps knuckles with Lucifer. Obama has played Carter’s understudy for 3 years now, but being kicked out of office in an electoral rout will not be the end of his career. No, Obama will haunt American policy for decades to come just as Jimmy Carter has. Obama can then whine about America’s missteps to an eager world as he wines and dines with dictators just as Carter has done, and write op-ed pieces in the New York Times that will inspire future generations of young Leftists until it is time for Obama to groom one just as Carter has groomed him.

Speaking of dictators, seeing Qaddafi off may be a relief to spell check designers worldwide, but rest assured there are others waiting in the wings to subject innocents to terror and atrocities. Julius Malema is a sprite 30 year old future president of South Africa who is being groomed as the heir to Robert “Comrade Bob” Mugabe of Zimbabwe “national impoverishment scheme through killing white people and taking their stuff.” While Malema is too young to have  put a few years of being a decent human being under his belt the way Mugabe did after Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, he’s not going to let that inexperience stop him from taking over Mugabe’s mantle as “Despot of a Country You Know is in Africa but Aren’t Sure Where in Africa,” although the “South” part of the name should make that task easier. I’m sure that in a few years we will even have a replacement for Qaddafi, and hopefully we will contract a hit on him too.

Of course the Republicans are auditioning for the role of Ronald Reagan, but so far conservative voters playing the role of “director” haven’t been happy with any of those answering the casting call. Mitt Romney was first to show up as he was four years ago, but he sounds too fake reading Reagan’s lines even though he has the part memorized. Rick Perry must have hit the audition after practicing his best Richard Nixon in the mirror because he came off sounding mean and liberal at the same time – amazing considering his experience and record in Texas. The director’s hopes were so high when Rick strode on the stage but then fell when he opened his mouth. Michelle Bachmann gave it her best shot, and the director was really pulling for her but unfortunately she really doesn’t understand the Reagan character. If conservatives ever have a call for a Margaret Thatcher role, I think she would do well. Herman Cain shows some promise but improvs in the audition by adding an un-Reaganesque sales tax. Newt Gingrich plays the role as Newt Gingrich. Reagan was no professor unlike Newt, and I think that Newt has a future in acting but just not for this part (but man I’m sure he’d be a hit!) Ron Paul reminds me of Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now; when he’s not flipping out he sounds like the sanest person alive. Then there’s Jon Huntsman. He’s got Community Theater written all over him. Next!

One thing is for sure, the roles will all be cast and the lines will all sound familiar to anyone who has been paying attention over the past 5 decades.

Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: Joshuapundit–-Egypt Moves Towards The Abyss

Noncouncil: Big Government- Journolist 2.0: Occupy Wall Street Emails Show MSM, Dylan Ratigan, Working With Protesters To Craft Message

Full voting here.

I don’t have many friends, but the few that I do have are quite special. Recently I’ve noticed that two of them have grown jaded with our political system, seeing no solution to the problem of corruption caused by cash from special interests, corporations and billionaires. They have lost all hope that we can contain the influence of a privileged few over the many, and are dropping out of political discourse. Another took issue with my criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement, stating he thought I was offering the simple solution that hosing down the encampments and sending the kids fleeing back to their dorm rooms would make things better. He wanted a better solution, one that involved listening to the other side, recognizing and even acting on the common ground between the two. I pointed out that I didn’t think life would be better without liberals; I consider myself a reformed one but continue to hold many of its values like universal human rights, concern for the environment, and racial equality. The only difference is how I want to achieve those goals. For example, I want to see environmentalists buying land to protect endangered animals or plants instead of using the federal government to limit the land owner’s property rights. Similarly, I might share some of the same opinions about corporate bailouts, student loan debt, and corruption in politics as liberals but I disagree with their solutions.

Every year Transparency International ranks corruption in the world’s countries, and will soon be releasing its report for 2011. The 2010 report had Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore topping the index as the least corrupt countries, with the United States ranked 22, tied with Belgium behind Chile and the UK. While the top tier of “clean” countries is dominated by small countries like Finland and Canada, both Germany and Japan rank higher than the United States. Having studied Japanese politics over the years I completely disagree with their optimistic assessment of that country, but I believe that overall the index does paint a fairly accurate picture of corruption in the world.

Being ranked 22nd may seem bad, but it is much easier to govern a small country such as New Zealand, population 4.3m, than it is the United States, population 300m. Large countries don’t appear in the survey until Germany at #15, population 81.8m, so the US is at least in the top tier of the least corrupt countries. The purpose of this comparison is not to undermine the argument that the United States has a corruption problem; it does, but it is not as bad as thought, or not bad enough that people can’t do anything about it. At least we have mechanisms in place that allow us to fight corruption, including a free press, an independent judiciary, and divisions between the legislative and executive branches of government. China, ranked 78th, has none of these.

The problem is that all of these elements that insure a free and fair society are under siege. Academia, a monoculture of elitist ideals, threatens the free press by its certification of the professional journalist. Prior to the 1960’s journalists entered the profession through the military or by applying to work for a newspaper then working their way up. It also impacts the judiciary through the indoctrination of lawyers in undergrad and law school who then become future jurists. The judiciary is also undermined manipulated by the Executive branch through the Department of Justice. The legislative and executive branches are manipulated by the need to raise ever larger sums of money to attain or stay in power. These branches then manipulate the government to reward supporters, punish enemies – just two of the hallmarks of corruption.

So if we want to root out corruption, where do we start?

There is a reason behind the name Transparency International. The enemy of corruption is exposure, and that is why a free press is critical to the achieving of a virtuous government. While most mainstream journalists are blinded by the indoctrination in journalism school, some are asking questions and seeing problems in a new light. The Internet has created an Army of Davids to use Glenn Reynolds’s term, whereby everyone with a cell phone camera and an Internet connection can upload stories that challenge and undermine the status quo. A politician or a cop can easily deny ever taking a bribe or acting illegally, but a video can expose the deceit in a way that words cannot.

Transparency can also be achieved through legislation. As a long-time supporter of Herman Cain for president, I will admit that I don’t fully appreciate his 9-9-9 Plan. I do recognize that its simplicity, however, is what makes it truly revolutionary for our time. Along with that simplicity comes a level of transparency in our everyday economic lives that most Americans have never seen.

Take for example payroll taxes. Most Americans receiving paychecks from an employer see deductions taken out for social security (6.2%) and Medicare (1.45%). What they don’t see is their employer’s side of FICA, another 7.65% that it pays to the government to employ you.

So what exactly is your compensation? An employee may believe his gross salary is $x, but his or her total compensation is really $x+7.62% including the employer’s FICA contribution. Now a worker might think that since the employer pays that, it’s not really his. But when the employer looks at the bottom line, it will look at total employee compensation which includes not only the 7.62% contribution but the value of fringe benefits such as health and dental insurance. Before hiring an employee, a employer usually budgets for the spot and that budget includes expected salary, the employer’s FICA contribution, as well as additional costs of the benefits package. Some of these benefits provide the employer with tax advantages that the employee doesn’t benefit from. The bottom line is that an employee doesn’t know how much he his being compensated, and an employer cannot easily determine how much an employee will cost.

This is exactly the type of scenario Cain’s 9-9-9 plan would simplify. An employee would be paid a salary which the employee would then be able to use to purchase benefits such as health care. This would decouple health insurance from employers since employers would not enjoy tax benefits for providing access to insurance. The cost of health insurance would be up front, and the employee would be able to buy the plan that suited him. If he’s young and single, a cheap catastrophic plan might be best for him. If he is older and has a family, more expensive full coverage might be more to his liking. The employee would then pay 9% of her salary to the government, which is 1.35% more than is currently taken out of her check but much less than the 15.3% she is already paying, half of which is hidden from her.

Simplicity and transparency go hand in hand. It is much easier for a company like GE to pay less taxes than you did last year when the tax code runs 70,000 pages and cannot be understood by anyone. If it had to pay 9% on its earnings it wouldn’t need platoons of tax accountants to comb through the 70,000 pages looking for every possible deduction. How much did it earn? $100 billion? Cut a check to Uncle Sam for $9 billion. It also wouldn’t need to spend money paying off congressmen to create GE-specific loopholes in that 70,000 pages. And next year when Transparency International conducts its survey, maybe the United States rises a notch or two.

This is one example of how we can improve the system that no one likes – whether it’s the Tea Partiers like me angry at Congress and the Obama Administration’s bailout of Wall Street, or the hippies stoned in the streets pissed off at the same thing. The important thing to remember is to not lose hope and give in to apathy. There are solutions, and they are not easy ones. But we need to begin to think grand again; we need to think “big.” These are immense problems and we can never completely solve them, but we can make things better for our society if we open our minds to new ideas like a flat tax or Herman Cain’s 9-9-9. If there are better ideas than Cain’s, let’s find them. If 70,000 pages of tax code become an edifice of bureaucratic inertia, let’s destroy it. But we shouldn’t throw our arms in the air and give up because that is exactly not what our country needs right now. It needs courage and conviction at a level we haven’t seen in awhile but that haven’t disappeared and are still there. What Tom Wolfe wrote years ago about Americans still rings true today, “Americans are childish in many ways and about as subtle as a Wimpy burger; but in the long run it doesn’t make any difference. They just turn on the power.” It’s time to turn on the power.

Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: The Razor–-Chosen Paths: Why I Don’t Resent People Making More Money Than I Do

Noncouncil: The Investigative Project On Terrorism- ABBas Could Be Next Domino To Fall

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Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: The Razor–-How Taking the Black Vote For Granted Is Racist

Noncouncil: Barry Rubin- Why Most of The Mass Media Can’t Report Honestly on Israel—Or Other Middle East Issues

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Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: Joshuapundit–-Can Israel Survive?

Noncouncil: Gonzalo Lira- What I Learned At Dartmouth

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Congratulations to this week’s winners.

Council: The Colossus of Rhodey–-Let me tell ‘ya something

Noncouncil: Barry Rubin- A New, Selective ‘Semi-Antisemitism’? Only Jews Opposing Obama Are Evil, Greedy, and Have Dual Loyalty

Full voting here.