GDP Up 20 pct. You Gotta Problem With That?

How much economic growth is enough? Writes Pete du Pont,

In the past 33 months the size of America's entire economy has increased by 20%--or, as National Review Online's Larry Kudlow put it, "In less than three years, the U.S. economic pie has expanded by $2.2 trillion, an output add-on that is roughly the same size as the total Chinese economy."

You gotta problem with that? A lot of Americans seem to, since a majority of Americans give President Bush low marks for his stewardship of the economy.

Don’t worry. The federal government has shared in the bounty. Revenues are soaring. In fact the revenue increases are obscene.

Federal tax receipts increased by 15%-- $274 billion--last year and 13%-- $206 billion--in the first nine months of this fiscal year, which, as the Journal points out, means the nine-month increases for the past two years represent the highest growth rates in 25 years. Looking ahead to the end of this fiscal year, total inflation-adjusted government receipts will likely be 23% above 2003 when the Bush tax cuts were signed into law.

You would think that the Democrats would at least be pleased about that.

Yes, those Bush tax cuts are really helping the economy surge ahead, and they are even cutting taxes in the states, although not in the Soviet of Washington, of course.

But there is one group of Americans who have not been converted to the virtues of tax cuts. And we mean, as we always do here at the Road to the Middle Class, tax rate cuts. Who is that mean-spirited, negative, reactionary group? Who else, but Congressional Democrats.

Today the Democratic Party is so vehemently opposed to income tax cuts that when President Bush's reached their final vote in May 2003, only 4% of Democratic legislators (2 of 48 senators and 7 of 205 representatives) voted "yes."

Naturally, the New York Times is not to be outdone by their pals on Capitol Hill when it comes to railing against tax rate cuts.

[V]arious New York Times editorials called them "economically unsound," claimed that "they will increase the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars" and said they were unlikely "to stimulate the wallowing economy."

No doubt the Times editorialist was confusing the national economy with the Old Media economy. As of this writing, there doesn’t seem to be anything that can stimulate that economy.

Let’s finish up with some more numbers. Because the wallowing MSMers certainly won’t talk them up, we will.

Reducing the capital gains tax rate from 20% to 15% increased capital gains tax receipts by 79% from 2000 to 2004. Cutting the dividend tax rate by more than half--from 39.6% to 15%--increased dividend tax receipts by 35% from 2002 to 2004. And corporate tax receipts have nearly tripled since 2003, reaching $250 billion for the past nine months, 26% higher than the same period last year.

With all that money flooding into the federal coffers I’d say that it is time to repeal the Death Tax.

As composer Giuseppe Verdi said to his librettist, Piave: “Cut, cut, and cut again!”

Can the Left Abandon Appeasement?

Back in 2004 the German writer Henryk Broder wrote to Welt am Sonntag to say that “Europa - dein Familienname ist Appeasement!” Interesting how he used the English word. The German for appeasement, according to Google, is “Beschwichtigung.” Yes. It means what you think it does. “Europe, thy family name is appeasement.”

Subsequently, Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, publisher of Die Welt, wrote a stinging amplification: “Europe - Thy Name is Cowardice.”

But let us be charitable to our liberal and lefty friends. Their whole belief system is predicated on the moral necessity of appeasement towards the oppressed and the marginalized, beginning with the working class in 1850. What else would they do?

It was a belief system that worked well for them for over a century. And it also gave them enormous political power.

But the question now before us is: Should we continue the policy of appeasement when it is the Muslim immigrants to Europe and the mad mullahs of Iran that are demanding it?

The saving grace of the old appeasement was that the workers, and after them the blacks, women, and gays, were in the last analysis loyal citizens of their nation states. But the Muslims immigrants may not be. Their first loyalty may be to their faith not to their adopted country.

If that is the case the wages of appeasement is not going to be merely a large public sector and economic stagnation, but something rather bloody.

But can the left change its belief system and its whole way of life in response to the new challenge?

In Israel, according to Dennis Prager, the left that was critical of Israeli policy in the occupied areas of Gaza and the West Bank has all of a sudden changed its tune. Writes Amos Oz, Israeli author and leftist:

"Many times in the past, the Israeli peace movement has criticized Israeli military operations. Not this time. . . . This time, Israel is not invading Lebanon. It is defending itself from daily harassment and bombardment of dozens of our towns and villages. . . . There can be no moral equation between Hezbollah and Israel. Hezbollah is targeting Israeli civilians wherever they are, while Israel is targeting mostly Hezbollah."

But has the mainstream left in Europe or in the United States reached the tipping point where they can no longer continue down the road of appeasement? Don’t hold your breath.

Is The West Too Soft To Be Ruthless?

Conservatives are taking a look today at the meaning of “proportionality.” Asks John Podhoretz:

What if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests?

Or you could wonder, with the more pungent Mark Steyn, what to do in your state when

the bumper stickers proclaim confidently, War Is Not the Answer.

It’s true, Steyn writes, war is not the answer. War is the question: “[I]s what you are worth defending?”

“You may not be interested in war,” said Trotsky, “but war is interested in you.”

The logic of appeasement is that it is the logical course of action for a people that does not yet realize how interested war is in them. Only when they catch up with reality do they switch from appeasement to resistance.

Podhoretz asks the question:

Could World War II have been won by Britain and the United States if the two countries did not have it in them to firebomb Dresden and nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The answer is that in the 1930s they did not have it in them to firebomb innocent civilians. It took the crucible of war and the London Blitz to rile them up enough to find ruthless warriors like “Bomber” Harris and Curtis LeMay that had it in them to carpet bomb German and Japanese cities.

After the war, of course, those with delicate sensibilities could start second guessing, and build distinguished academic careers building the nuanced case that the strategic bombers, the ruthless men of action, were monsters.

The point is that in today’s war we are not “there” yet. We are not to the point where we are willing to go ruthless in the War on Terror.

For the Israelis, of course, that point has already been reached. If they do not take out Hezbollah then they are saying that it is OK to rain missiles on the Israeli heartland. For them the years of proportionate response are over.

Who Can Cross the Partisan Divide?

As Connecticut Democrats get ready to sink their liberal Democratic senator Joe Lieberman, Debra J. Saunders wonders if he isn’t the Democrats’ version of John McCain. In talking to some Democrats she told them:

I appreciate McCain's efforts to curb Washington's runaway spending.. What is more, I think McCain in the White House could go a long way in healing the country's ugly partisan divide.



Then again, I added, Democrats have their own maverick — Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman.

But is John McCain really the Republicans’ Joe Lieberman? Joe Lieberman is a good loyal Democrat, except that he is not willing to join the fever swamp in abandoning the War on Terror. John McCain ran against the Republican base in 2000, has authored the unconstitutional McCain-Feingold limitation on political activity, and has seemed until recently to be always looking for ways to stick it to President Bush and garner some cheers from the mainstream media.

There is something missing in John McCain. I call it class.

But there is a potential Republican presidential candidate who does have class and who does have a record of healing the partisan divide. That man is Rudi Giuliani, the Republican who was elected twice as mayor of Democratic New York City.

And according to Ryan Sager Rudi, the gay-friendly, pro-choice Republican, does just as well among the conservative Republican base as McCain. Actually, the idea that Giuliani could not win conservative votes has come principally from the mainstream media, who for months have been writing on

a willful adherence to a false storyline that social conservatives could never accept a Giuliani candidacy.

How would they know? I mean, who would be the last group in the country to have a clue about who social conservatives would vote for? Exactly, liberal MSM journalists.

Here’s my prediction. John McCain will burn up like straw. There are too many Republicans that just don’t like him.

John McCain is no Joe Lieberman. John McCain is John McCain. And he just doesn’t have what it takes to be nominated as the presidential candidate of the Republican Party.

Who Stands for the Jews?

Everybody loved the Jews when they were helpless victims slaughtered in the Holocaust. And everyone loved them as plucky underdogs against the Arabs in 1948 and 1956 and 1973. But the left has no room in its heart for people who aren’t progressive or who aren’t victims. And so the left of Europe has slowly moved towards an open support of the Palestinians. They must be right because they are victims.

That’s how you get to demanding “proportionate” response to Hezbollah border attacks and rocket attacks. But as Suzanne Fields points out:

Restraint is what you show in disputes with rational people who are willing to compromise, who will give up something in return for something. But restraint can buy time for your uncompromising enemies to enable them to plot the ambush to kill you later.

Hezbollah and its master in Tehran do not believe in compromise. They believe in the elimination of Israel.

Throughout history, the biggest problem the Jews have had is trying to figure out who their friends were—at least for the moment.

The question in the United States is: how much longer can American Jews afford to vote for a party whose leading presidential candidate once embraced the wife of a terrorist. And how much longer can American Jews keep voting for a party that is about to kick out a Jewish United States Senator because he is insufficiently opposed to the War on Terror.

The clock is ticking and the hour is getting late.

Because the question is: How soon with the left turn from its veiled opposition to Israel to frank and open anti-Semitism?

Public Opinion on Lebanon

After the shock of the new Mideast War we are beginning to see public opinion forming in the pronouncements of the opinion makers. In Europe, of course, the watchword is “disproportionate” as in Israel’s response to border violations and rocket attacks on its citizens.

But in the US there is a different dynamic developing. There is the “arc of Shia radicalism” argument, suggested by Walid Phares, in which the Iranians are building an arc of Shia radicalism from Tehran to Beirut with Hezbollah holding down the right flank.

Then there is Michael Barone observing that the rules have changed in this Mideast War because there is now, after the withdrawal from South Lebanon and Gaza, no excuse for the “land for peace” argument. Israel’s two enemies want to destroy it. Period.

A lot of people are panicking about the strength of Iran and Hezbollah. But Peter Brookes wonders if it is Syria that is panicking. “Syria,” he writes, ”will not be invited to attend this Wednesday's Rome conference on Lebanon.”

Damascus is, in actuality, desperate. It is becomes increasingly marginalized in this Middle East crisis by both the United States and other Arab nations, and may have little to no say in resolving the current Lebanese conflict. This would be a serious blow to Damascus' interests-and more painfully, its ego.

Imagine that. Condi going to the Middle East with cards to play against Syria and Iran.

Suppose that Israel succeeded in defanging Hezbollah, and suppose Syria actually offered substantial concessions to get into the game.

Well, you never know. Justs because CNN and Al-Jazeera are showing mayhem and disaster 24/7 doesn’t mean that, behind the scenes, there really is mayhem and disaster. It just means that they are filling the TV screen with ruined buildings and frightened, wounded children. Because that is what they do.

Anyone for "Mongolian Ping Pong?"

I have seldom been so delighted by a movie as “Mongolian Ping Pong.” It’s a delightful story of a Mongolian boy whose father sends him down from the yurt to dip a bucket of water in the river. And what does he spy in the river, but a round white thing floating along. What is it? Grandma thinks that it is the treasure of the water spirits.

This Mongol seven-year-old, descendant of the Great Khan no doubt, is already a fine horseman, and he and his two friends get into a lot of adventure and trouble with their parents as the movie unfolds—as any decent kids with a spark of spirit should do.

There are spectacular shots of the steppe and its endless grasslands, and they are long shots with people riding into them or walking off as the mood takes them.

The grassy steppe, remember, goes right across Asia from Hungary to the Pacific Ocean. That’s why Genghis Khan and his merry men were able to conquer the whole of Asia. So long as they kept to the steppe their horses had grass to eat, and as long as the horses were fed they could keep invading. That is a big deal for an army because horses eat about ten pounds of grass a day while a soldier needs only one pound of food each day.

But what is most poignant about the movie is that these Mongol kids seem to have the whole steppe to ride around in and get up to mischief. What American kid has such freedom?

Of course, all good things must come to an end. At seven the kid has to go off to boarding school in the city.