MUST READ: Donald Trump, Class Warrior

SPOT ON> Donald Trump, Class Warrior - Bloomberg View@clive_crook https://t.co/ZzbjN1BPqn

— Roger Simon (@rogerlsimon) February 20, 2016

Another characteristic of the new upper class -- and something new under the American sun -- is their easy acceptance of being members of an upper class and their condescension toward ordinary Americans. Try using "redneck" in a conversation with your highly educated friends and see if it triggers any of the nervousness that accompanies other ethnic slurs. Refer to "flyover country" and consider the implications when no one asks, "What does that mean?" Or I can send you to chat with a friend in Washington, D.C., who bought a weekend place in West Virginia. He will tell you about the contempt for his new neighbors that he has encountered in the elite precincts of the nation’s capital....

These Washington friends, in case you were wondering, are good people. They'd be offended by crass, cruel jokes about any other group. They deplore prejudice and keep an eye out for unconscious bias. More than a few object to the term, "illegal immigrant." Yet somehow they feel the white working class has it coming.

My neighbors in West Virginia are good people too. Hard to believe, since some work outside and not all have degrees, but trust me on this. They're aware of how they're seen by the upper orders. They understand the prevailing view that they're bigots, too stupid to know what's good for them, and they see that this contempt is reserved especially for them. The ones I know don't seem all that angry or bitter -- they find it funny more than infuriating -- but they sure don't like being looked down on.

Many of them are Trump supporters...

A Personal and Heartfelt Message to GOP and Republican Party who are frustrated by my support of Donald Trump https://t.co/4PKp20oNeQ

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) February 20, 2016

Does he intend to rip the nation apart?

◼ Restoring the American dream. Upward mobility depends on smaller, not bigger, government - Washington Times EDITORIAL via ◼ Washington Times Opinion

We can expect President Obama’s big speech Tuesday night to be full of his usual class-warfare bloviation about the “lack of upward mobility” being the “defining problem of our time.” He wants more and bigger government, so he defines problems in a way that demands another federal solution.

...The United States has fallen in almost every ranking of economic freedom over the past decades. Government has ballooned, the regulatory burden has become onerous and property rights are precarious and insecure.

The Great Recession ended five years ago, but few feel the effect of an improved economy. These are the barriers to upward mobility, not the prosperity of entrepreneurs and investors.

If Mr. Obama really wants to make a difference, he’ll negotiate a truce in the war on poverty and the culture, and call in his State of the Union speech for a restoration of the freedoms that gave birth to the American dream. Only then can we hope to see morning in America again.

◼ Competence questions threaten Obama's executive push -  - Brian Hughes/Washington Examiner @BrianHughesDC

President Obama will unveil a slate of executive actions in his State of the Union address Tuesday just as questions about competency plague his White House.

...On the eve of Obama's address to Congress, the White House accused Republicans of overplaying the president's intentions.

“We're not saying this is an either/or proposition,” press secretary Jay Carney said of executive action versus new laws. “It's a both/and. It's reaching out to Congress and looking forward to the possibility of further bipartisan cooperation on big, medium and small issues.”

“The president should absolutely use the powers available to him and the unique authority that the office provides to move forward,” Obama's top spokesman added.

Some Republicans argue, however, that Obama's latest State of the Union pitch is just a rhetorical gimmick. They say Obama's address Tuesday is just the latest version of his “we can't wait” tour and other campaign-style messages employed to change the narrative in Washington.

“He can work with us to create opportunity and prosperity. Or he can issue press releases,” Brendan Buck, spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said of Obama. “That's the choice the president faces this year.”

Amid Tragedy, Obama Bares Partisan Teeth

◼ At least twelve people died today in an attack on a U.S. military installation. We don’t yet know if it was terrorism. It could be an attack on our country. - Keith Koffler/White House Dossier

But this is not a time for unity. Not at the White House, that is, where President Obama, after paying brief homage to the victims, began laying into Republicans with vitriol, scare tactics, and sarcasm...

◼ Krauthammer: Obama Going Ahead With “Hyperpartisan” Economic Speech Was in “Extremely Bad Taste” (Video) - Nice Deb

On Special Report, tonight, Charles Krauthammer slammed Obama for his decision to go ahead with a previously scheduled economic speech while the the Naval Yard shooting was still unfolding, calling it “in extremely bad taste.”

The speech itself, he called “hyperpartisan” while marveling at the president’s “remarkable” quip that (in his magnanimous opinion), some Republicans “are decent.”

To do this within minutes of 13 Naval employees – brave Americans who lie dead – was in extremely bad taste,” Krauthammer noted with great disdain. ”He could have waited until tomorrow. It isn’t as if this is a holy anniversary – (the 5th anniversary of the financial crisis).”

◼ Naval Yard shooting aftermath went according to script - Thomas Lifson/American Thinker

Does anyone else out there find it shocking that by implication the President of the United States characterizes his opposition party as indecent, with only "a number of folks" in the decent category? And that he would do this in the wake of news of a mass slaughter?

Also behaving according to script are the gun grabbers, with Senator Dianne Feinstein in the lead, demanding regulations to deprive law abiding citizens of the means of defending themselves. The Colorado recall votes last week delivered a heavy blow to the gun grabbers. For them, the slaughter at the Naval Yard was an opportunity, and they are not letting it pass by.

“I wasn’t aware that you could only set the bar so high and that we could only dream so big."

◼ VIDEO: Kardashian Mom Slams Obama For Comments Against Success and Ambition - IJ Review

Kim Kardashian’s mother Kris Jenner defended her daughter while criticizing Obama for his comments putting down successful celebrities.

I was taught ‘dream big, work hard, and you could have whatever you want.’

And I thought, ‘wow I bet the president has some friends with 10,000 square foot houses and you probably wouldnt mind going over there, mister president, while you were asking them to have a party for you when you were campaigning for dollars to run for president.

I was thinking about her 10,000-square-foot house, and I thought, ‘Wow, her job affords her to live in a 10,000-square-foot house’. And I think, if I’m not mistaken, Mr President’s job affords him to live in a 55,000-square-foot house.

I find it so odd that he’s picking on Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.

Kanye West, first of all, doesn’t go on vacation, ever. And Kim Kardashian is the hardest-working young lady in the world. She never sleeps, she never stops, she never slows down and works so hard for what she’s got.

You poke at someone and criticize someone for living a lifestyle – I’m sure when he was growing up his dream was, ‘One day, I want to become President of the United States, and have this wonderful fabulous life and that was his dream.’

The Hollywood Tax Story They Won't Tell at the Oscars

◼ Hollywood Elite Celebrate Oscars ... Tax Breaks, Too - Matthew Auerbach/Newsmax

With the 85th annual Academy Awards coming up Sunday, Hollywood has every right to feel good about itself. Last year marked the first rise in ticket sales since 2009, which accounted for a record take of $10.8 billion.

Ticket buyers aren’t the only ones forking money over to the film industry.

Glenn Reynolds’ column in the Wall Street Journal outlines the overwhelming number of states providing tax incentives to moviemakers as a way of attracting them to their neck of the woods to make their latest masterpiece.

◼ It's easy to demand higher levies on the 'rich' when your own industry gets $1.5 billion in government handouts. - Glenn Reynolds/Wall St. Journal (Instapundit)

With campaign season over, you're not likely to hear stars bringing up taxes at this weekend's Academy Awards show. But the tax man ought to come out and take a bow anyway. Of the nine "Best Picture" nominees in 2012, for example, five were filmed on location in states where the production company received financial incentives, including "The Help" (in Mississippi) and "Moneyball" (in California). Virginia gave $3.5 million to this year's Oscar-nominated "Lincoln."

Such state incentives are widespread, and often substantial, but they don't do much to attract jobs. About $1.5 billion in tax credits and exemptions, grants, waived fees and other financial inducements went to the film industry in 2010, according to data analyzed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Politicians like to offer this largess because they get photo-ops with celebrities, but the economic payoff is minuscule. George Mason University's Adam Thierer has called this "a growing cronyism fiasco" and noted that the number of states involved skyrocketed to 45 in 2009 from five in 2002.

When you say, “My God, one of every three welfare recipients lives in California,” or “California schools are terrible,” you mean really, “Not in Newport or Carmel. So who cares about Fresno, or Tulare — they might as well be in Alabama for all the times I have been there.”

◼ California at Twilight - Victor Davis Hanson/PJM

...We are like the proverbial spoiled third-generation progeny of the immigrant farmer: the first-generation toiler lived in a hovel until he bought his 80 acres with paid cash. The second remodeled the old house, had a nicer car than a tractor, doubled the acreage, but took the weekend off and had less money in the bank than did his dad. The third fantasized and puttered about in his hiking boots, went through the inheritance, mortgaged the land — and was as glib and mellifluous as he was broke.

California is a tired idea.

To judge from his surly demeanor and defiant words at his press conference Monday, Barack Obama begins his second term with a strategy to defeat and humiliate Republicans rather than a strategy to govern.

◼ Ivory-tower Obama can't abide views he doesn't share - Michael Barone/Washington Examiner @michaelbarone

His point-blank refusal to negotiate over the debt ceiling was clearly designed to make the House Republicans look bad.

But Obama knows very well that negotiations usually accompany legislation to increase the government's debt limit. As Gordon Gray of the conservative American Action Network points out, most of the 17 increases in the debt ceiling over the last 20 years have been part of broader measures.

Working out what will be in those measures is a matter for negotiation between the legislative and executive branches. That's because the Constitution gives Congress the power to incur debt and the president the power to veto.

Obama supporters like to portray Republican attempts to negotiate as hostage-taking or extortion. But those are violent crimes. Negotiations -- discussions attempting to reach agreement among those who differ -- are peaceful acts.

What we do know, from Bob Woodward's "The Price of Politics," is that Obama is not very good at negotiating. He apparently can't stomach listening to views he does not share.... - Read the rest, at the link.

◼ Humiliating the Opposition, it’s the Obama Way - B. Daniel Blatt/Gay Patriot

A major part of my despair for the country is the manner in which our president and the Democratic Party openly worked to destroy the reputation of that kind, decent, honest man. That action was truly despicable. What makes it even worse was that it worked.

◼ Despair Inside the Beltway: Reflections on the upcoming second inauguration of President Obama. - Arnold S. Trebach, J.D., Ph.D./American Spectator

I find myself in despair for our beloved country. It is quite likely that a large minority of the nation’s citizens agree with my pessimistic mood. The reasons for that despair are not difficult to discern.

Our beloved country is in terrible condition. The awful evidence is easily seen everywhere, for those willing to look. Our economic situation is unsustainable. Yes, the government of the richest country in the history of the world is, by all reliable measures, broke. Our national government cannot pay its bills and every day sinks deeper in debt because it is addicted to spending at extravagant rates. We are on our way to becoming the sad equivalent of Greece or another failed state.

There is plenty of blame to pass around for this condition and it should be shared by Democrats and Republicans, by George Bush and by Barack Obama, but the major part of the blame must be placed squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Obama and his administration. He has been in power for four years and he promised that he would deal with all of our major problems. He has not done so.

To put fine point on the matter, our president terrifies me, even though during most of my life I have been a liberal Democrat and voted for him in his first election.

If viewed honestly his first term has been an unmitigated disaster. The national debt is at an historic high. So is unemployment. Despite these sad, undeniable facts, he was elected to another term. That of course is typical of his history for much of his life. He is a master politician of the Chicago school and yet a disaster as a manager and practical leader.

◼ A Reply to My Commenters - Arnold S. Trebach, J.D., Ph.D./American Spectator

Even using Republicans as proxies, there was little remotely conservative about fascism. Hitler and Mussolini were probably to the right of our left-leaning media and education establishments, but labeling Tea Partiers as fascists doesn’t indict the Right. It indicts those declaring so as radically Left.

◼ Obama, Hitler, And Exploding The Biggest Lie In History - Bill Flax/Forbes

...It’s also ironic that even as orthodox Marxism collapsed due to economic paralysis, cultural Marxism predicated on race, sex and identity politics thrives in “Capitalist” America. The multiculturalists substituted race where the Soviets and Maoists saw only class. America’s civic crusade has become political correctness, aka cultural Marxism, preoccupied with race. Socialism wheels around again.

While political correctness as manifest in the West is very anti-Nazi and those opposing multiculturalism primarily populate the Right, it’s false to confuse fascism with conservatism. Coupling negatives is not necessarily positive. Because the Nazis would likely detest something that conservatives also dislike indicates little harmony. Ohio State hates Michigan. Notre Dame does too, but Irish fans rarely root for the Buckeyes.

America’s most fascistic elements are ultra leftwing organizations like La Raza or the Congressional Black Caucus. These racial nationalists seek gain not through merit, but through the attainment of government privileges. What’s the difference between segregation and affirmative action? They are identical phenomena harnessing state auspices to impose racialist dogma.

The Nation of Islam and other Afrocentric movements, like the Nazis, even celebrate their own perverse racist mythology. Are Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright conservatives? Is Obama?...

Obama’s raid on Social Security ends with a whimper

◼ Contrary to all the hype about “saving” the middle class from tax increases, taxes did go up on people making less than $400,000 per year, as part of the fiscal cliff deal. The primary vehicle for this tax increase is the end of the 2 percent “payroll tax cut” implemented in 2010. - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

This was never a true “tax cut.” It was a raid of Social Security funding – a cut in the Social Security tax on employees from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. There was to be no corresponding loss of benefits to American workers who enjoyed this funding cut. Social Security doesn’t work that way anyway – it is falsely presented to the public as some kind of individual retirement account built up over a lifetime, but in fact it’s a straightforward welfare program, with current workers funding the benefits of current retirees. Congress ended up diverting funds from other areas to cover the shortfall, so those nervous about the solvency of Social Security – notably the AARP – tended to describe the payroll tax cut as a “threat” or “risk” to Social Security funding.

President Obama was strangely silent about the end of the payroll tax cut that he once defended so vigorously. In fact, he used to push for the extension of his tax cut with the same kind of overheated hyperbole and human stage props that he used during the fiscal cliff drama. In February 2012, he launched a Twitter hashtag called #40Dollars to whip up public support, named after the amount of money that would be taken from weekly paychecks if the tax cut expired. He marched a number of people who responded to his Twitter campaign on stage to declare, “This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class. The last thing we need is for Washington to stand in the way of America’s comeback… this is the least of what we should be doing for working Americans.”

...The noisy life, and bizarrely quiet death, of the payroll tax cut should serve as another lesson in the folly of “temporary” tax cuts. Early critics of the measure said it was a gimmick that distracted the public from effective, permanent pro-growth tax reform, and it couldn’t be left on the books as a threat to Social Security funding forever. We live in a world of invincible, permanently growing government programs that can’t even be trimmed back, let alone killed when they prove to be failures, coupled with “temporary” tax cuts we lose unless we fight like wildcats to keep them… turning against each other in a panicked frenzy of class warfare when we’re told we can’t keep all of them. Enjoy those lighter paychecks, middle class Americans!

“Why,” asked The Washington Post on the eve of the final “fiscal-cliff” agreement, “is the nation’s leader not embracing and then explaining the balanced reforms the nation needs?”

◼ KRAUTHAMMER: RETURN OF THE REAL OBAMA - Human Events

Because he has no interest in them. He’s a visionary, not an accountant. Sure, he’ll pretend to care about deficits, especially while running for re-election. But now that he’s past the post, he’s free to be himself — a committed big-government social-democrat....

Fundamentally, Obama is a leveler. The community organizer seeks, above all, to reverse the growing inequality that he dates and attributes to ruthless Reaganism. Now, however, clothed in the immense powers of the presidency, he can actually engage in unadorned redistributionism. As in Tuesday night’s $620 billion wealth transfer.

Upon losing the House in 2010, the leveler took cover for the next two years. He wasn’t going to advance his real agenda through the Republican House anyway, and he needed to win re-election.

Now he’s won. The old Obama is back. He must not be underestimated. He has deftly leveraged his class-war-themed election victory (a) to secure a source of funding (albeit still small) for the bloated welfare state, (b) to carry out an admirably candid bit of income redistribution and (c) to fracture the one remaining institutional obstacle to the rest of his ideological agenda.

Among the Seven Deadly Sins, not even Lust is more important than Envy when it comes to electing Democrats

◼ All-Purpose Scapegoats: Fiscal-cliff deal won’t end the Democrat war against “the rich.” - Robert Stacy McCain/American Spectator

Good-bye, “tax cuts for the rich.” If the legislation passed on New Year’s Day means nothing else, it should at least put an end to a rhetorical trope that Democrats have been pounding for the past decade. This has been the essence of the Democrat party’s economic message since the enactment of the “Bush tax cuts” in 2002: Everything that is wrong with the economy — and with the federal budget — can be attributed to the fact that the rich aren’t paying enough taxes....

Americans have been repeatedly told in recent years that “the rich” (however that term is defined) are not paying “their fair share” of taxes, and that this greedy unfairness is the explanation of anything that needs explaining. Did the local factory lay off workers? The rich are not paying their fair share! Is your daughter struggling to repay her student loans? The rich are not paying their fair share!

Especially in the “swing states” during last year’s election campaign, voters heard this Democrat message so often, in so many iterations, that it must have seemed like the universal panacea, a sort of snake-oil miracle cure. Whatever your problem — obesity, dandruff, halitosis, chronic flatulence — the Democrats promised to cure it by finally forcing the rich to Pay Their Fair Share. This message proved to be amply satisfactory to people too stupid or too lazy to bother themselves with arithmetic. Perhaps it is not entirely a coincidence that comparatively few of those math-deficient voters are themselves rich....

Sen. Rand Paul explained this in a New Year’s Eve floor speech before he voted against the deal. “Mark my word, you will raise tax rates and you’ll feel good because you went out there and you got those rich people,” the Kentucky Republican told his colleagues before they voted 89-8 in favor of the bill. “You campaigned against rich people and you got enough envy whipped up in the country, and you’re going to stick it to those rich people. But guess what? You may not get any more revenue. You may not get any more economic growth. But you can say, ‘I stuck it to the rich people.’”

"And you got enough envy whipped up in the country. And you’re going to stick it to those rich people. But guess what? You may not get any more revenue."

“Mark my word, you’ll raise tax rates and you feel good because you went out there and you got those rich people. You said you were. You campaigned against rich people. And you got enough envy whipped up in the country. And you’re going to stick it to those rich people. But guess what? You may not get any more revenue. You may not get anymore economic growth. But you can say, “I stuck it to the rich people.”"

France's highest court overturns 75% tax on ultrarich

◼ Embattled French President Francois Hollande suffered a fresh setback Saturday when France's highest court threw out a plan to tax the ultrawealthy at a 75 percent rate, saying it was unfair. - AP

In a stinging rebuke to one of Socialist Hollande's flagship campaign promises, the constitutional council ruled Saturday that the way the highly contentious tax was designed was unconstitutional. It was intended to hit incomes over €1 million ($1.32 million).

The largely symbolic measure would have only hit a tiny number of taxpayers and brought in an estimated €100 million to €300 million - an insignificant amount in the context of France's roughtly €85 billion deficit.

◼ French star Gérard Depardieu moves to Belgium to escape French taxes... - FOX/NY

The Socialist government under French President Francois Hollande has infuriated many ultra-rich in France by presenting a 2013 budget that would tax top earners at 75 percent over the first €1 million of annual income. Belgium's top rate is 50 percent.

◼ Actor Depardieu puts Paris house up for sale - Reuters

An angry member of parliament has proposed that France adopt a U.S.-inspired law that would force Depardieu or anyone trying to escape full tax dues to forego their nationality.

◼ Gérard Depardieu has declared that he will return his French passport and leave his homeland, in an exasperated letter where he fired back at the French government's criticism of his decision to move to Belgium. - Devorah Lauter, Paris/Telegraph

"I am handing over to you my passport and social security, which I have never used," he said. "We no longer have the same homeland, I am a true European, a citizen of the world, as my father always taught me to believe."

He concludes: "Despite my excesses, my appetite and love for life, I am a free being, Sir, and will remain polite."

...Depardieu said his reasons for renouncing his citizenship are due in part to fundamental disagreements with the current Socialist-led government, which has introduced several new tax hikes, including a 75 per cent tax on millionaire earners.

◼ France warms to Gérard Depardieu, the heroic exile - Anne-Elisabeth Moutet/Telegraph

The symbolism has not been lost on the French. When France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, the CEO and main shareholder of the luxury behemoth LVMH, applied for Belgian citizenship last August, it was easy for Socialists to paint him as an unpatriotic, despicable fat cat. “Get lost, you rich b------” blasted a headline on the front page of Libération, the Left-wing daily, effectively capturing the national mood.

But Depardieu is a vastly different proposition from a wealthy tycoon and former asset-stripper whose children’s weddings warrant 10-page spreads in society magazines. When Jean-Marc Ayrault, France’s prime minister, contemptuously called him “a pathetic loser”, Depardieu shot back with an open letter published on Sunday. “I was born in 1948,” he wrote, “I started working aged 14, as a printer, as a warehouseman, then as an actor, and I’ve always paid my taxes.” Over 45 years, Depardieu said, he had paid 145 million euros in tax, and to this day employs 80 people. Last year he paid taxes amounting to 85 per cent of his income. “I am neither worthy of pity nor admirable, but I shall not be called 'pathetic’,” he concluded, saying that he was sending back his French passport.

Public Support of Tax Increase Is a Myth

◼ Most don’t know that successful individuals and small businesses already pay a progressive rate - Colin Hanna and Alex Cortes/Roll Call

Myths are perpetuated in Washington, with conventional wisdom created by one person and bouncing off hundreds more in a self-reassuring circle of groupthink. But in real America, you can find the truth if you look hard enough.

When the Democratic Party and the fourth branch of government, the mainstream media, unite on an issue, the result is a powerful megaphone of misrepresentation. During the present fiscal cliff negotiations, the most egregious myth perpetrated by the Democratic media complex is that the public supports raising taxes on the successful.

You might believe that the Democrats and mainstream media are right, according to public opinion polling. Just one example, a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, found that 60 percent of respondents support increasing taxes on incomes more than $250,000 a year, including a meaningful 39 percent of Republicans. It is seemingly hard to argue with that.

However, when you ask the public what the top tax rate should be, you get a completely different picture of reality.

In a survey conducted by The Hill in February, 61 percent of likely voters said the top tax rate should be 25 percent or less, a rate that is substantially lower than the present top rate, demonstrating majority support for lowering taxes below what they are today. Fully 88 percent said the top rate should be at the current 35 percent, or less. Only 4 percent supported a top tax rate of 40 percent, which is closest to the proposal of President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats to increase the top rate to 39.6 percent.

This is worth repeating: Only 4 percent of the public supports the tax rate Democrats are trying to force successful small businesses and individuals to pay. This finding destroys the myth that Obama’s election was primarily a mandate for higher taxes.
So why is a majority of the public calling for higher taxes, while at the same time believing the top rate should be lower than it is today?

The answer is that today a majority of the public simply does not know that successful individuals and small businesses are already paying a very progressive tax rate of 35 percent — higher than what the public supports. As conservatives, we have only ourselves to blame for failing to inform them of this reality.

Peter Schiff: Majority Doesn't "Have A Right To Steal My Money Just Because They Voted For It"

◼ CNBC's Eamon Javers reports the latest developments on "fiscal cliff" talks in Washington, and debating the financial benefits of raising taxes on the wealthy, with Peter Schiff, Euro Pacific Capital CEO, and Richard Brodsky, Demos senior fellow. - Real Clear Politics

PETER SCHIFF: First of all, I'm in the top two percent. Right now, I'm paying 45% of my total income in income taxes, both to the state of Connecticut and to the federal government, and if you take the 3% Medicare tax. After the tax hikes go into effect next year, more than half -- more than half of my total income is going to go to the government. You tell me, what's fair about that when medieval serfs pay 25%, I'm paying half? I don't care what the majority voted to do, they don't have a right to steal my money just because they vote for it.

###

SCHIFF: You know what the wealthy are going to do? They're going to invest more abroad, they're not going to work as hard, they're not going to pay as much in taxes, they're not going to employ as many people. They're employees are going to pay all the taxes.

“Sadly, I was wrong” about Obama, isn’t good enough

◼ The country deserved better geniuses: More of the post-election mea culpas. - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion

◼ An Unfortunate Broken Promise - Greg Mankiw

Back in 2008, when President Obama was running for his first term, he promised to be a post-partisan leader. While a Democrat, he said he would accept good ideas when they came from Republicans. At the time, I believed him, at least to some degree. And I wrote about it in this NY Times column.

Sadly, I was wrong. The short version of the story is this: As a candidate, President Obama campaigned on a platform of raising taxes on the rich. Yet he and his economic advisers also said they wanted to raise dividend taxes only slightly, from 15 to 20 percent. For reasons I explained in the Times article, keeping dividend taxes low was a position bolstered by good economics. Now, however, the president wants to raise dividend taxes to ordinary income tax rates (plus, for high-income taxpayers, the new tax of 3.8 percent that is part of the Obamacare legislation).

To be it another way, he campaigned as a moderate, willing to concede that the other party had some good ideas on tax policy. Once in office, he gave up on those ideas.

CALIFORNIA TEACHERS UNION (PROPAGANDA) VIDEO FEATURES 'RICH' URINATING ON 'POOR'

◼ A new video produced by the California Federation of Teachers – which could be playing in your child’s classroom as we speak – drums up the typical class warfare images we’ve come to expect from Big Labor. - EAG News- SACRAMENTO

“Tax the Rich: An Animated Fairy Tale,” written by CFT staffer Fred Glass (2011 compensation: $139,800) and narrated by proud leftist actor (and 1 percenter) Ed Asner, advocates for higher taxes on the “rich” as the cure for government’s insatiable thirst for spending.

The video claims the rich got rich through tax cuts and tax loopholes and even tax evasion.

But when the 99 percent fought back, the “rich” apparently urinated on the “poor,” at least according to the video. What a classy way to frame your argument for children, Big Labor.

Michelle Malkin responds:

"What’s got her guts in an uproar is apparently rumors that the President wants to cap charitable deductions and lower the mortgage interest deduction… coupled with the sudden and unwelcome realization that Republicans are maybe going to smile nastily and let Obama do just that…"

◼ The Mandate To Raise Taxes on the “Rich” - Susan Estrich

Within days of winning the election, President Obama announced that his victory gave him a mandate to raise taxes on the "rich."

Come again? This was a two-and-a-half-point election. It reflected a painfully divided electorate. The only mandate I saw was to unite a divided country.

◼ Let Obama be Obama - Ed Driscoll/PJM

Silly Susan. She of all people should know that the MSM grants every Democrat president a mandate to do whatever harebrained schemes he’s dreamed upon winning — even when he doesn’t receive an absolute majority of the vote.

Which is but one reason why Moe Lane of Red State writes,◼ ”While I think that it’s adorable that Susan Estrich thinks that Barack Obama cares about why anybody did or did not vote for him, it’s also pretty much irrelevant:”

What’s got her guts in an uproar is apparently rumors that the President wants to cap charitable deductions and lower the mortgage interest deduction… coupled with the sudden and unwelcome realization that Republicans are maybe going to smile nastily and let Obama do just that…

What’s that? Why is that a possibility? Oh, well, the reason why is because a hard cap on charitable deductions will bite deep into the willingness of rich liberals to fund nonprofits, including ones that are frankly front groups for Leftist advocacy organizations; and lowering the mortgage interest deduction will have the same effect on Blue State residents as would, say, a sledgehammer between the eyes would to a cow. Shared sacrifice, baby.

Which brings us to ◼ Victor Davis Hanson’s recent column at NRO, and this modest proposal: “Why doesn’t the Republican-controlled House of Representatives give both voters and President Obama what they wished for?”

It´s clear from Obama´s indignant tone at Wednesday´s press conference that he has no intention of reconciling differences with Republicans over fiscal policy.

◼ Watch Out, Speaker, Obama Still Channeling Saul Alinsky - IBD Editorial

His mentors counseled to never compromise with "the enemy."

....This isn't your Bill Clinton Democrat back in the Oval Office, one who'll listen to reason, compromise, cut a deal. No, this is a different Democrat entirely, far more radical, much more doctrinaire in his leftist beliefs. And now very angry, seeking "revenge."