Kruse Kronicle

Obama’s Patriotic Nominees

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by

mwkruse
in

Arthur Brooks writes in Who Really Cares:

"First, imagine two people: One goes to church every week and strongly rejects the idea that it is the government's responsibility to redistribute income between people who have a lot of money and people who don't. The other person never attends a house of worship, and strongly believes that the government should reduce income differences. Knowing only these things, the data tell us that the first person will be roughly twice as likely as the second to give money to charities in a given year, and will give away more than one hundred times as much money per year (as well as fifty times more to explicitly nonreligious causes)." (10)

Liberals believe it is government's responsibility to care for the poor. They vote for government programs and pay for them with taxes. Private charity is peripheral. The way to improve care for the poor is to raise taxes. So we know we shouldn't expect liberals to part with their after-tax income to help the poor. But now we learn Obama nominees Tim Geitner (Treasury), Tom Daschle (Health and Human Services), and Nancy Kilfner (Chief Compliance Officer) don't even pay all their taxes!

What's that you say, Joe Biden?

Yes, Joe, thankfully, we've entered a new era. We've put greed behind us and are released from our obsession with abortion and gay rights. We've entered a new Millennial era where we truly care about the poor and patriotically do our civic duty. 🙂

Comments

8 responses to “Obama’s Patriotic Nominees”

  1. Nate Avatar
    Nate

    At least none of them were from Alaska with extremely shading taxes on personal family expenses and running for VP right?! Ha!
    I know “accountability” is something conservatives haven’t had in their vocabulary for the last 8 years, but it’s nice to see a pres admit when he screws up?
    Love you blog, but I couldn’t help respond to a cheap shot on someone that amounted to 900 bucks.
    Cheers.
    PS Out of all of these offenses, the most egregious appears to be the guy that got thru???

    Reply
  2. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Hi Nate. Good to hear from you again. Its been awhile.
    I’m not calling the Republicans choir boys (or girls.) The issue for me is the near god-like reverence being given Obama and this idea that we now have some new era of super caring politicians in office. I’m not buying it.
    Democrats made the issue of greedy people not paying enough taxes a central focus of the campaign. They talked of ending corruption and greed. When you call others out and then do the same things you called others out on, it isn’t going to be pretty.
    What it is really odd is that they got embarrassed once weeks ago with the Geitner nomination. It seems to be you would become especially sensitive to this issue on future nominations. Yet it happened twice more.

    Reply
  3. Nate Avatar
    Nate

    I’ve definitely still got you in my Reader!
    Good points you are making.
    This type of thing happens in every nomination process…D or R…which is unfortunate and telling.
    I agree about the hypocrisy (except maybe Killefer which I’m not sure is a big deal…but it’s hard to say), which I think given the standard of administrations before this kind of thing would be status quo. We live in a plutocracy run by greedy corporations/politicians and we should know better than to expect them to act with moral integrity (if we really looked at the true taxes/income versus reported of D/R’s it would probably shock us…lol).
    However what Obama seems to be doing is taking his transparency, accountability, and willingness to admit error (i.e. humility) into the realm of action and not just campaign words. That does not make 3 wrongs a right (which is your valid point on the Obama walks on water attitude of many), but in my book it is an extremely refreshing change from the last 8 years of corruption, secrecy, and arrogance. Case in point is that 2 of these 3 errors are being corrected (as opposed to being covered up and telling everyone to look the other way because I am the president and I can do what I want, and oh yeah it is in a John Yoo legal memo or something…lol.) I guess I’m just taken aback by his behavior in the Couric interview…in a good way.
    To think that I didn’t try to defend the noms like some lib blogs have been doing!
    I’m a “centrist”…ha!
    Anyways…again thanks for the Kronicle.
    Cheers.

    Reply
  4. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Thanks Nate. Obama didn’t acknowledge these goofs until hours after this post. I’m confident he read my blog and saw the hand writing on the wall. 🙂
    Going back to Jimmy Carter in ’76 (which is the first election I can really recall much about) I have never understood this tendency by large chunks of the population to idolize presidents. They cast government and/or the president as a god-like entity that will bring peace, hope, and fulfillment to the world.
    I tend toward Republican views on a lot of issues but the idolization of Bush after 2000 by some supporters was down right spooky. This Obama thing is far spookier. The president and the government are not the center of the universe. God is.
    I should also confess, that by temperament, I don’t suffer idealism well. 🙂

    Reply
  5. Nate Avatar
    Nate

    It is spooky…
    I like Obama…but I’m not being all that idealistic either…lol.
    I like that you are leaning conservative. Guys like you or a Tyler Cowen, Ross Douthat, etc., have a way so that even when I may disagree, I don’t feel like I got my head ripped off or am an idiot because I did so.
    But I guess the WWE mentality inside politics makes it easier to listen to Rush, Hannity, and OReilly to get “news” and “facts.”
    I should probably add Drudge to that list, after such a promising start, but who has turned into such a right wing hack over the last couple years.
    Anyways…one of these years I may get back into blogging. I found my kind of blog type (thousands out there with Christians, theology, church issues, etc) to be narcissistic. And also I had a cyber stalker/troll type who had a grudge, and I got tired of deleting posts from different IPs…lol.
    Cheers.

    Reply
  6. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    “…have a way so that even when I may disagree, I don’t feel like I got my head ripped off or am an idiot because I did so.”
    Thanks. I aim to be honest about my views while hopefully not being to abrasive. That you feel this way makes my day.
    BTW, I know about deleting posts. I don’t have a stalker but some Russian group keeps posting comments here, some linked to porn. Had one this morning. It is a pain!

    Reply
  7. William Apel Avatar
    William Apel

    Michael,
    You said, “Liberals believe it is government’s responsibility to care for the poor. They vote for government programs and pay for them with taxes. Private charity is peripheral.” I agree completely.
    Perhaps this explains why VP Joe Biden gives so little to charity (see referenced url).

    Reply
  8. Michael W. Kruse Avatar
    Michael W. Kruse

    Here is the url William intended to include:
    http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2008/09/biden-releases.html
    Yes. I had seen this as well. Obama seems to have a better record.

    Reply

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