Letters to the Editor

beekeeper, by gosh I’m trying not to insult you, but, you’ve not advanced anything worth complimenting. You’ve insisted that Cantor is a bad American as if he were Alger Hiss (sorry, you probably consider Mr. Hiss and Whittaker Chambers heroes).

Capitalism will always be a superior path to prosperity than socialism or other forms of government enforced financial interventionism. Chairman Obama is taking us down the wrong road - history has shown it without exception. Chairman Obama is either woefully ignorant of history or he’s closer to Hugo Chavez in political philosphy than anyone gave him credit for…..and you’re cheering him on.

You said you don’t read MoveOn.org and can think for yourself - well, by gosh, show us something that illustrates you think for yourself, because you haven’t done so up to this point.

O.K. beekeeper, I’ll take you at your word that you’re not a lazy liberal moron. I must say, though, that both of your posts are two of the best imitations of a lazy liberal moron that I’ve seen in quite some time.

It’s abundantly clear that you’re simply parroting MoveOn.org talking points and, as a part of the liberal intelligentsia, that you have no principles if your position on dissent is dictated by who is the president. If you’ve been paying attention to what’s going on, you wouldn’t be making these foolish statements.

Yes, just over half of the electorate voted for change - but, it was supposed to be change for the better wasn’t it? Where’s the change for the better? Chairman Barry has selected a series of cabinet candidates with tax problems, Clinton retreads and has taken over the census (something that would have had your panties in a knot the size of a softball had GW Bush done it) for purely political reasons and consequences.

If you support taking money from people who earned it to give to people who didn’t earn it while simultaneously allowing the government to get a 40% to 70% cut of said funds, you’re a bad American, you’re un-American and you’re unpatriotic - how’s that taste? It is patently immoral to take money away from producers and earners and give it to moochers who do not produce and do not earn.

Say what you want about Cantor, but, his way has been more successful, more frequently than government interventionism which is all we’re getting from your boys who waltzed in under the banner of change. If by change you mean Bolsheviks in 1917, I guess you got what you wanted.

Too much regulation and too much government intervention got us where we are - thanks to the CRA and the experimentation of Robert Rubin in the 1990s and the inaction of the George W. Bush administration to correct this government over reach. Obama is continuing the disaster with more government interventionism despite being told by the congressional budget office’s warning that his plan would be worse than doing nothing at all.

Wow beekeeper, you liberals dumped that “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism” slogan faster than a drunk cheerleader once President Bush left office. So now, with a new president, you believe with all your heart that dissent with this president makes you a bad American. You believe that if you don’t mindlessly get in line with any idea Chairman Barry throws against the wall you’re an obstructionist. You believe that nothing the liberal democrats do deserves any kind of critical review? Way to stick with your deeply held principles. You know, it sounded stupid when Sean Hannity applied it to liberals and it sounds both stupid and hypocritical when liberals who made a cottage industry of dissent for the last 8 years apply it to guys like Eric Cantor.

What about Cantor’s obligation to object to bad legislation or legislation that is not given adequate time for debate, discussion or understanding. Do you sign documents that you haven’t read and don’t understand? Yes, of course you do, especially if you were told to by someone you were convinced had magical or divine powers.

I give Cantor a tremendous amount of credit for not being seduced by whatever it is that has you girls blindly swooning over the new president who has made one poor decision after another since his inaugural. 

By the way, Eric Cantor can’t obstruct anything, the Republicans are in the minority REMEMBER?

Look, just because the New York Times and MoveOn.org furnish some of you clones with talking points doesn’t mean you shouldn’t double check them for accuracy. Eric Cantor and his fellow Republicans cannot stop any legislation your buddies in the democrat party decide they want to pass. Cantor & Company don’t have the votes to stop them.

I don’t mind you guys parroting liberal talking points, but, don’t you think that there should be a SCANT trace of fact in them when you spout off?

Leonard Pitts could find something racial to complain about with regards to the weather. What many people don’t know is that Leonard Pitts belongs to the same church organization that Chairman Barack Guevara belongs to (not the same church location, but, the same church in terms of its beliefs - UCC). He’s a kook and rarely, if ever, understands the big picture about anything. When your sole focus is racial politics with the emphasis on grievances, you’ve condemned yourself to a life of myopia and misery - although Pitts has demonstrated that you can make a living from it (not necessarily an intellectually honest living).

That is true Mr. Preis, but it was only done to finance the war (remember that?) which began that year.

Here is a little blurb from the Department of the Treasury’s fact sheet on Taxes.

The Civil War

When the Civil War erupted, the Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1861, which restored earlier excises taxes and imposed a tax on personal incomes. The income tax was levied at 3 percent on all incomes higher than $800 a year. This tax on personal income was a new direction for a Federal tax system based mainly on excise taxes and customs duties. Certain inadequacies of the income tax were quickly acknowledged by Congress and thus none was collected until the following year.

By the spring of 1862 it was clear the war would not end quickly and with the Union’s debt growing at the rate of $2 million daily it was equally clear the Federal government would need additional revenues. On July 1, 1862 the Congress passed new excise taxes on such items as playing cards, gunpowder, feathers, telegrams, iron, leather, pianos, yachts, billiard tables, drugs, patent medicines, and whiskey. Many legal documents were also taxed and license fees were collected for almost all professions and trades.

The 1862 law also made important reforms to the Federal income tax that presaged important features of the current tax. For example, a two-tiered rate structure was enacted, with taxable incomes up to $10,000 taxed at a 3 percent rate and higher incomes taxed at 5 percent. A standard deduction of $600 was enacted and a variety of deductions were permitted for such things as rental housing, repairs, losses, and other taxes paid. In addition, to assure timely collection, taxes were “withheld at the source” by employers.

The need for Federal revenue declined sharply after the war and most taxes were repealed. By 1868, the main source of Government revenue derived from liquor and tobacco taxes. The income tax was abolished in 1872. From 1868 to 1913, almost 90 percent of all revenue was collected from the remaining excises.

I think that it is only fair to point out that the taxes were only leveled as a means to finance the war, which is a constitutional responsibility of our government. They were not levied to finance social programs and pork barrel spending projects. Our politicians, on both sides of the aisle, can take a lesson from that.