Where your tax money goes…

Or, at least one of the many, many holes your tax money is poured into.

The Population Research Institute fights misconceptions about overpopulation and the polite-sounding programs of “family planning” organizations.  Their latest video is on the contrast between what we spend preventing malaria and what we spend trying to prevent “those people” from having more children.

Also, check out the page with the video, Project: Real Need, discussing the problem of sending aid that is not only unrequested, but unhelpful and unwanted.

Sort of like Planned Parenthood sending medical teams into Afghanistan after the U.S. invasion to do abortions; almost all of the women who lined up to see them were angry to find out that Planned Parenthood wasn’t offering immunizations or anything helpful like that for their children, but only offering to kill their unborn children for them.

Or, on a somewhat lesser, but still insulting, scale, sending yellow corn where humans only eat white corn (yellow is for animals), then managing to reverse the problem in another aid situation (sent white corn, when only animals were fed the white corn in that region).

Or the absolute havoc we wreaked on Haiti’s rice farming industry.  We totally killed it with rice delivered as aid, and now Haiti imports rice (cost), when it used to export it (profit).  Even former President Clinton admitted recently that the aid helped the Arkansas rice farmers a whole lot more than it helped the Haitians.

The whole thing is sort of like the annoying relative who insists, over and over, on giving you what she’d like to get (or what she insists you need) for Christmas.  Except that you smile politely, then send it straight to the donation box at the thrift store.  She felt good (in a reality-ignoring way), but it didn’t help the intended recipient one bit.

We only have so many resources, no matter how endless they seemed (and, right now, they don’t look so endless).  We have to be good stewards of those resources, providing for real needs, not just giving what we want people to have.

And, in every case, we have to stop funding abortions with tax dollars.

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Good crises

Remember when we didn’t need to know the proper plural of the word “crisis”?  (Had to doublecheck I’d spelled that right.)

EWTN is running its usual “we’re down financially again” spot: Deacon Bill pleading with people to consider sending a donation so that they can keep running.  He pointed out that a financial crisis (either personal or national) is an opportunity (and a God-allowed opportunity, I would add) for spiritual growth.  Often this kind of painful prodding can get us somewhere we resisted going: we have to learn to rely on God.

Funny, but the Obama administration seems to think it’s an opportunity for everyone to be forced to rely on the government.

I guess we should’ve expected this; crises tend to flush people out who want to exploit a crisis for their own ends.

Remember the young girl in El Salvador several years ago who was allegedly raped while on vacation?  Except that the accused didn’t have the same STD’s as the ones she was supposed to have contracted from the rape.  And her step-father was the one loudly pushing for an abortion, when it was illegal.  Hmmm…  Well, instead of pursuing justice or even saying that the government should make an exception for such cases only (never mind actually helping the girl, instead of just dragging her through the additional horror of an abortion, or even keeping the baby’s remains for the DNA evidence), pro-abortion activists used it as an excuse to clamor for full abortion “rights” in the country.

Of course we all remember the clerical sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, in the U.S. particularly, a few years ago.  Almost all of the cases were decades old, adding to the horror that these problems had not been addressed swiftly and properly when they occurred (although, when the problems were caught and dealt with, many bishops followed the “expert” advice that said, “No problem, we can rehabilitate him and he can work with kids again.”).  Not only were the bishops railroaded into a knee-jerk mandatory-training-for-everyone response (useless, I would add; I attended the training, as required), but the main victims’ groups weren’t satisfied with that.  Nor were they satisfied with legal settlements.  No, some of these groups used the crisis to cry for the immediate ordination of women, the allowance of marriage for clergy, and lay oversight boards of parishes and dioceses.  Never mind that the Anglicans have all of these things and have still had sex abuse problems.  Or the factors of homosexuality, “loyal dissent” to the Church’s teachings on sexuality, or a number of other issues.  No, a good crisis demands some sweeping change.  Quickly.

Crises tend to elicit a gut-level emotional response: “Wow, that’s horrible, we must Do Something Now!”  As a mom, I can understand the desire to “fix” things, preferrably as fast as possible.  As I tell the kids, though, unless the house is on fire or someone is bleeding profusely or unconcious, it’s not a crisis, and I won’t act like it, no matter how much they fuss.  However, when a large group of people start clamoring for a “fix,” people in charge (especially politicians, who live by opinion polls) feel pressured to favor speed over careful fact analysis.

Which just begs for someone to come along, promise to fix everything, and use the Do Something Now impetus to do whatever he/she wants.

Enter Obama.

“Crisis… crisis… crisis… deepening crisis… unprecedented crisis… crisis… did I mention the crisis?”

Coordinating with this is the increasing push to silence critics.  The “fairness doctrine” is back, threatening to “level the playing field” for the overwhelmingly conservative field of talk radio.  (Suspiciously, there has been no mention if this will be applied to the overwhelmingly liberal field of network news.)  The conscience clause, strengthened by President Bush in his last days in office, is in the process of being removed (because we don’t want doctors or pharmacists exercising their “freedom of choice” not to do abortions, that might confuse people about the rightness of abortion… pesky Hippocratic Oath!  We should ban that, too!).  Republicans in the House were informed that their contributions to any bills were neither desired nor required.  After years of complaining about President Bush “acting like a dictator” by making Supreme Court nominations of people who *gasp* actually shared his views on how the Constitution should be interpreted… now Democrats seem to be in love with the phrase, “Shut up, we won.”

“Hey, this is a crisis!  No time for discussion!”  (what does forcing doctors to do abortions or funding overseas abortion advocates or funding the massive failure called embryonic stem cell research have to do with fixing the economy?)  “Silence!  Didn’t you hear the word CRISIS?”

The real problem with the “stimulus” bill was that much of it wasn’t about stimulating the economy.  It was about pushing all of the programs the Democrats wanted.  Sure, it wasn’t everything at once…  But the economic crisis was a wonderfully handy excuse to push the country in socialist directions.  “No, no, that isn’t what we’re doing!” went the denials at first.  “Well, ok, it is, but we’re justified in doing it!” is what we’re hearing now.  What’s next?  “Ok, we aren’t really justified in doing it, but we’re going to do it anyways because we won”?

Charles Krauthammer examined this with his usual sharpness here.

And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis.

What’s going on? “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”

Things. Now we know what they are. The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his “Big Bang” agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.

 

And yet, this could become a set of good crises, and not just for spiritual growth.

My brother (not a Republican by any stretch) is upset with the direction we’re taking; he says he doesn’t think the government should be getting involved in all these private companies, “too big to fail” or not.

Tax demonstrations have been breaking out, here and there.  Having organized one measley little demonstration last year, I can tell you that for everyone out there, demonstrating in public, there are probably at least fifty people who strongly agree but, “just don’t do protests,” or couldn’t make it.

Good grief, Whoopi Goldberg (definitely not a Republican) was fuming on The View about taxes going crazy to pay for all of this planned government spending.  As someone on Fox said tonight, “Obama’s problem is that he’s losing the American people.  And if you’ve already lost Whoopi…”

Someone much wiser than me on EWTN (I forget who) was preaching about God and how He deals with our sins and unsavory wanderings off the straight and narrow.  God, he said, sometimes gives us exactly what we thought we wanted.  Just long enough for us to realize how awful and self-destructive it would really be.  (also known as ”to give someone enough rope to hang themselves” in less theological circles)  Remember the Prodigal Son?  He got exactly what he wanted… and he realized, painfully, how fleeting what he wanted was compared to the benefits of obedience and honest work in his father’s house.  For many people, this kind of crisis has led to incredible conversions to lives of faith, reliance on God, and a cheerful embrace of the straight and narrow.

America is finding out, at long last, exactly what Obama meant when he said “CHANGE”… and a lot of Americans are beginning to think that they don’t really like getting exactly what they asked for.

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Selfish

In response to the McCain campaign calling Obama’s tax plan “socialist,” Sen. Obama replied (ok, technically, it wasn’t a reply (as in an answer), it was a bounces-off-me-and-sticks-to-you retort):

“Since when is selfishness a virtue?”

 

I don’t know Sen. Obama, maybe you should ask your running mate.

Sen. Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, have given an average of $369 per year to charities during the past decade, according to tax returns posted today to Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign Web site.

Senator Biden, the Democratic nominee for vice president, claimed $995 in charitable gifts in 2007 on the joint return with his wife. That figure is 0.3 percent of the couple’s claimed income of nearly $320,000.

The 2007 contributions were significantly higher than the couple’s gifts in previous years, which ranged from $120 to $380. (source article)

0.3%  Wow.  Now that’s generous.  Especially for a family with no children at home that makes more than three times what my household makes. 

And it was less in the previous years?!?  I’ll acknowledge that the Catholic Church (which Sen. Biden doesn’t listen much to, anyways) doesn’t preach the literal tithe of 10%… but it does say quite clearly that we should be generous in supporting our parish, our diocese (so it can help poorer parishes), other Catholics, and the world at large.  If you have money to spare, you really should be giving more than 10%.  If you’re seriously scraping, give what you can.  But 0.3%?!?

 

Heck, while we’re at it, Sen. Obama, you could probably give us a pretty good explanation of selfishness-as-virtue.  When the Obamas released their tax returns, it was quickly noticed that they only gave about 1% of their annual income to charity in 2000-2004.  They got all the way up to 5% and 6% in 2005 and 2006, when their income ballooned to over $1 million.  The Obamas’ explanation?  They “couldn’t afford more,” despite an annual income averaging $244,000 in 2000-2004.  (see article at National Review)  And with $4.2 million in 2007, they gave 5.7%, or $240,000.  Gee, wow.

Oh, wait, Sen. Obama, you meant you think I should give you more money to give away and claim credit for.  Strange, but I don’t call that generosity; I call that playing Robin Hood.  The poor loved him, because he gave them money… which he had stolen from the rich, who overtaxed it from the poor in the first place.  The problem is that our rich either earned their money or inherited it from parents who had; there is no moral excuse for taking their rightful property away from them.

 

As noted in a previous glut-of-quotes-because-I-don’t-feel-like-writing-tonight post, “A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.” (G. Gordon Liddy)

Of course, conservatives are just nasty, selfish people who don’t want to pay their taxes so the poor will stay poor and they’ll be the only ones with medical care and food… or something…  From the just cited article:

The Obamas got rich in 2005. Their income increased sevenfold from 2004 to 2005, mostly because of Mr. Obama’s book royalties, and stayed very high in 2006 for the same reason. In 2005, another wealthy political couple with significant book royalties was Mr. and Mrs. Cheney, who had a combined income of $8.8 million, largely due to Mrs. Cheney’s books and the couple’s investment income. Just how much did the Cheneys give to charity from their bonanza? A measly 78 percent of their income, or $6.9 million. (No, that is not a misprint.)

This last fact does not generally square with the well-cultivated liberal trope of the blackhearted Cheneys. Unless, that is, you believe that private charity is not an important value that defines one’s character, compared with government taxation and welfare spending (which Mr. Cheney generally opposes, despite the profligate ways of the Bush White House).

Hmmm.

The Palins gave 2-3.8% of their income, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.  I can’t say I’m impressed, but that’s still two to four times as much as the Obamas when they were making similar income… and the Palins have more kids to support.

Based on guesses and assumption about what Cindy McCain’s tax deductions, it looks like she gave away about $284,500 out of about $6 million, which comes to about 4.7%  A little less than the Obamas, but Cindy McCain also travels and works extensively for her charitable organization, including travelling to work in orphanages in Calcutta and, more recently, going to Georgia shortly after the Russians tried to start a war there.  (Michelle Obama earns a similar salary to Cindy McCain ($273k for Obama to $299 for McCain)… for sitting on a hospital board.  For a hospital that suddenly got some very fat earmarks when her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate.)  Oh, yeah, and Sen. McCain’s returns show that he gave away $105k out of $405,000 income, or about 26% of his income.  Which would bring the McCains’ joint giving rate to about 6%… pretty much the same as the Obamas, after they started making millions and started thinking about national political aspirations.

So, in short, Sen. Obama should remember that whole “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” line.  Except for the Cheneys, I’m not particularly impressed by any of these charitable giving percentages, but the Democrats come out looking particularly stingy.  Good grief, if you’re making over a million, I’m thinking you could probably stand to give away a bit more than 6%.

But I don’t want the government mandating it, so I guess I’m selfish.

(no, I’m not going to release my tax returns… but my family gives away more percentage-wise than any of these people, with three small kids at home, and much less disposable income.)

 

Which brings us back to Sen. Obama’s tax plan.  Frankly, I don’t think the progressive income tax is fair, either; how is it government’s job to tell someone they have too much money?  Tie your taxes to the size of your house, how much you consume, something logical, but not your income, your success.

My pastor can feel free to tell me I need to think about giving more (something I hear in church much to rarely, to be honest)… but not the government.  Besides, charitable organizations, especially religious ones, are generally much better at administering charity, both in efficiency and efficacy.  Government eats up a significant chunk of the money in waste and bureaucracy, and doesn’t generally enjoy a reputation for efficacy.  (“We’re from the government; we’re here to help,” is usually heard as a threat, not a promise.)

And who will pay when the taxes go up?  When you tax businesses and corporations, they aren’t just going to deduct that from their profits.  In the name of staying competitive, they might absorb some of the cost, but much (if not all) of the increased tax costs will be passed on to the consumer… you and me.

And that incredible windfall of $500 a year in tax reduction Obama promises on his tax calculator website for my demographic?  It isn’t going to cover that increase in consumer prices.  Assuming any tax reduction ever happens.

The main beneficiary of this tax plan is going to be the government… and, to do it, they’re going to rip off most of the rest of the country.

Now that’s selfish.

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