CBS Relays Obama-Backer Buffett's Specious Claim Rich Under-Taxed

The Tax Foundation reported on July 18 that new 2006 IRS tax data revealed “both the income share earned by the top 1 percent of tax returns,” those earning $388,806 or more, “and the tax share paid by that top 1 percent have once again reached all-time highs.” Gerald Prante pointed out those top 1 percent “paid about the same amount of federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95 percent of tax returns.” The top 5 percent, those making $153,542 or more, earned 36 percent of all the reported income, but they paid just over 60 percent of the total income taxes collected.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX: When it comes to reparations, would you take it a step further, in terms of apologizing for slavery or offering reparations to various groups?

SEN. BARACK OBAMA: You know, I have said in the past, and I’ll repeat again, that the best reparations we can provide are good schools in the inner city and jobs for people who are unemployed. And I think that strategies that invest in lifting people out of the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, but that have brought applicability and allow us to build coalitions to actually get these things done, that, I think, is the best strategy.

Not to mention a strategy that Obama believes will cost billions of dollars and involve universal healthcare.  But it apparently will not involve reparations, which is a point worth clarifying.

Talk about warped priorities. The do-nothing/14 percent approval-rated Congress, led by Nancy the Navigator Pelosi, refuses to allow debate on drilling; the appropriations bills are in limbo, and judicial vacancies abound.

Next stop: Reparations!

What a sorry lot.

The resolution does not address the controversial issue of reparations. Some members of the African-American community have called on lawmakers to give cash payments or other financial benefits to descendents of slaves as compensation for the suffering caused by slavery.

Let's face it. The average individual American has little or no clout with Congress and can be safely ignored. But it's a different story with...

Congress and the environmentalists aren't through with us. If you're bothered by skyrocketing food and energy prices, wait until Congress reintroduces its environmentalist-inspired Climate Security Act, so-called cap and trade.

There's a hateful side to cap and trade that's revealed by asking the question: How will it be decided who received how much allowance to emit greenhouse gases?

Auto-industry insiders over the years have often blamed Detroit's mounting problems on mediocre management, poor technological leadership and a lack of vision for the future.

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It calls for the "eradication of poverty" in part through the "redistribution (of) wealth of land" and "a fair distribution of the earth's resources." In other words: American resources.

It's a mantra of liberals that the U.S. is only a small portion of the world's population yet consumes an unseemly portion of the planet's supposedly finite resources. Never mentioned is the fact that America's population, just 5% of the world's total, also produces a stunning 27% of the world's GDP — to the enormous benefit of other countries. Nonetheless, their solution is to siphon off the product of our free democracy and distribute it.

We already transfer too much national wealth to the United Nations and its busybody agencies. Obama's bill would force U.S. taxpayers to fork over 0.7% of our gross domestic product every year to fund a global war on poverty, spending well above the $16.3 billion in global poverty aid the U.S. already spends.

If you're worried abut gasoline and heating oil prices now, think what they'll be like when the U.S. is subjected in an Obama administration to global energy consumption and production taxes. Obama's Global Poverty Act is the "international community's" foot in the door.

The U.N. Millennium declaration called for a "currency transfer tax," a "tax on the rental value of land and natural resources," a "royalty on worldwide fossil energy production — oil, natural gas, coal . . . fees for the commercial use of the oceans, fees for the airplane use of the skies, fees for the use of the electromagnetic spectrum, fees on foreign exchange transactions, and a tax on the carbon content of fuels."

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times . . . and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama has said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen."

Oh, really? Who's to say we can't load up our SUV and head out in search of bacon double cheeseburgers at the mall? China? India? Bangladesh? The U.N.?

To provide for the transport of the enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Washington, DC, where the United States Supreme Court will be able to more effectively micromanage the detainees by holding them on the Supreme Court grounds, and for other purposes.

The Bullet America Dodged

Remember John Kerry? He was the Democrats' presidential nominee a scant four years ago, and he is still making the occasional speech, as if to remind us how wise we were not to elect him. Last night he gave what the Boston Globe's Michael Paulson touts as "a major speech on interfaith dialogue" at a "Christian-Muslim conference" at Yale.

Kerry also said, "I know enough about Islam to know that I don't know enough about Islam," which we guess is supposed to explain why he voted for the Iraq war despite his retrospective pro-Saddam position.

In any case, Kerry's mild antipathy toward America plainly is rooted in ignorance. He blames America for the lack of "mutual understanding with the Muslim world," but the basic problem is that certain strains of Islam encourage their adherents to kill for their religion. In fact, an Associated Press story illustrates what America's enemies think of interfaith dialogues

Anyone who thinks the problem is that Americans don't understand our enemies' religion, doesn't understand our enemies' religion. Good thing we had enough sense to keep such a man out of the White House.

NYT wonders: Why didn’t Obama leave his aides behind and visit those wounded troops alone?

Gooooood question. One that’s been asked before. Repeatedly.

Before his visit to Ramstein Air Base, which is near the medical center, was canceled, the plan called for reporters to stay behind at an airport terminal while Mr. Obama and one adviser met with the troops. Why? The Pentagon does not allow reporters and photographers inside Landstuhl…

[O]ne question remains: Why didn’t Mr. Obama leave his aides behind, even the retired general, and make the visit by himself?

“Even him going alone would likely be characterized by some as a political event,” Mr. Gibbs said in an interview on Monday, adding, “He decided not to put the troops in that position.”