{"id":30490,"date":"2012-09-19T07:11:08","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T12:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=30490"},"modified":"2012-09-19T07:11:08","modified_gmt":"2012-09-19T12:11:08","slug":"romney-was-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=30490","title":{"rendered":"Romney Was Right"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The media &#8211; in carrying out their role as Obama&#8217;s Praetorian Guard &#8211; has been doing its damnedest to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.weeklystandard.com\/blogs\/note-romney-s-arrogant-and-stupid-remarks_652548.html?nopager=1\">try to paint Romney&#8217;s &#8220;47%&#8221; remark as a huge gaffe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But Mitt was right; 47% of the people\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/washwire\/2012\/09\/18\/the-data-behind-romneys-47-comments\/\">don&#8217;t pay taxes<\/a>. \u00a0And in some cases &#8211; the poor &#8211; there may be a reason for this.<\/p>\n<p>The lefty and media (ptr) came out with all sorts of rationalizations and\u00a0tu quoques &#8211;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Republican states pay less than average!&#8221; was one I saw on TV yesterday (Channel 9 was duly parroting the Media Matters chanting points), which is hilarious, given that the states they point out invariably have lower per-capita incomes and costs of living than the Blue states; you&#8217;ve got liberals bitching about progressive taxation!<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Many rich people pay no taxes!&#8221; &#8211; Leaving aside the obvious answer &#8211; it&#8217;s a red herring, the middle class and wealthy as a whole <em>do\u00a0<\/em>pay the vast majority of this nation&#8217;s tax burdeen &#8211; well, gosh, d&#8217;ya suppose we should simplify the tax system to remove some of the byzantine loopholes? \u00a0 A flat tax would sure fix that&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Part of that is the Bush Tax cuts!&#8221; &#8211; This is a dumb evasion. \u00a0The Bush tax cuts were across-the-board. \u00a0But it&#8217;s hordes of &#8220;targeted tax cuts&#8221; that have so imbalanced the system &#8211; because the tax system has long been an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ge3aGJfDSg4\">instrument of redistribution<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But whatever the qualifications and rationalizations, whatever the reasons for some and the outrages of others, the fact remains that this society can not survive with, soon, less than half of its people paying in.<\/p>\n<p>Romney should not back off of this statement. \u00a0His campaign has been far too timid lately; while for about a week or two after the Ryan selection he was cooking with gas, rife with promise that this nation could finally have The Big Conversation it&#8217;s needed for at least a generation (the one that Tip O&#8217;Neill blocked thirty years ago), he&#8217;s been running a campaign only a weasel consultant could love since then.<\/p>\n<p>We need to reform entitlements. \u00a0We need an America where everyone has some skin in the game. \u00a0Above all, we need a nation that doesn&#8217;t believe government is something we &#8220;belong to&#8221;, but rather something we hire to do some distasteful jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The media &#8211; in carrying out their role as Obama&#8217;s Praetorian Guard &#8211; has been doing its damnedest to try to paint Romney&#8217;s &#8220;47%&#8221; remark as a huge gaffe. But Mitt was right; 47% of the people\u00a0don&#8217;t pay taxes. \u00a0And in some cases &#8211; the poor &#8211; there may be a reason for this. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,123],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-president-obama","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30490"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30501,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30490\/revisions\/30501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}