Bob Klahn -> Ed Hulett wrote:

 BK>  ...

 EH>> One thing they will certainly do is raise taxes on high
 EH>> earners. The Bush tax cuts are scheduled to expire in 2010,
 EH>> and congressional Democrats will gleefully allow the top
 EH>> rates to rise.

 BK>  Excellent!

Only to a blithering idiot.

 EH>> Left-leaning Democrats, such as Barack Obama himself, want
 EH>> to "spread the wealth around," as the candidate told Joe
 EH>> the Plumber in October. Blue Dog Democrats want to reduce

 BK>  Not quite correct.

Argue all you want, but I have the audio to prove it is correct.

 BK>  ...

 EH>> Raising taxes when the economy is weakening is not the
 EH>> medicine prescribed by Keynesian economics, and it is
 EH>> probably not what Obama's economic advisers would prescribe
 EH>> if they were starting from scratch today.

 BK>  It worked for FDR, Reagan, GHW Bush.

No, it did not.

 EH>> It is what Herbert Hoover and Congress did in the early
 EH>> 1930s, and it helped to produce the Great Depression. But
 EH>> it is baked into the pie.

 BK>  It worked for FDR, Reagan, GWH Bush.

Not, it did not.

 EH>> So is a slide toward trade protectionism. The breakdown of
 EH>> the Doha Round and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's refusal to
 EH>> bring the Colombia Free Trade Agreement to a vote mean that
 EH>> both multilateral and bilateral trade liberalism channels
 EH>> are clogged.

 BK>  Excellent.

Only to an isolationist moron.

 EH>> Obama may or may not try to renegotiate NAFTA,
 EH>> as both Canada and Mexico have center-right governments
 EH>> satisfied with current arrangements. But the trend will be
 EH>> toward less free trade.

 BK>  Canada won't even be affected, and neither really has a choice.
 BK>  If they won't renegotiate Obama can cancel it. Which is what he
 BK>  really should do. Call it the nuclear option for renegotiation.

You don't know what you are talking about.

 EH>> The prospects are cloudier for two other issues on which
 EH>> Obama has made big promises. Much of the next Congress's
 EH>> time and psychic energy will be taken up with refashioning
 EH>> financial regulation -- a subject of considerable
 EH>> difficulty.

 BK>  Start by repealing all the bills repealing the regulations.

You mean the bills signed in 1999 by Clinton?

 EH>> And the looming recession will make it
 EH>> politically risky for Democrats to push big spending
 EH>> programs.

 BK>  Spending is a good way out of a recession.

Government spending has *NEVER* been a positive thing, nor has it ever
helped anyone out of a recession.

 EH>> This means that Congress in the next two years may not pass
 EH>> Obama's national health insurance plan.

 BK>  One of the few things that offers real hope of making things
 BK>  better for business in this country.

You are delusional.

 EH>> The weakening economy and the enraged reaction earlier this
 EH>> year to $4-a-gallon gasoline also make it less likely that
 EH>> Congress will pass carbon reduction legislation --
 EH>> certainly not a carbon tax and probably not a cap-and-trade
 EH>> system.

 BK>  True. OTOH, conservation may gain bigtime.

It will hurt those who can least afford it.

 BK>  ...

 EH>> Two issues pushed by Democrats in this Congress have no
 EH>> budgetary costs.

 EH>> One is the "fairness doctrine," which is intended to shut
 EH>> down talk radio, the one communications medium in which
 EH>> conservative voices are dominant.

 BK>  Other than TV and the print media, that is.

You're delusional again.

 BK>  ...

 EH>> What might happen in the unlikely event McCain is elected
 EH>> and faces a Democratic Congress?

 EH>> Presumably he would try to hold tax rates down, but to do

 BK>  Not for very long. He will soon come to recognize, as GHW Bush
 BK>  did, that tax increases are necessary to pay the bills.

The tax increase was forced on GHW Bush by a Democrat Congress. All the
president can do is either sign or veto what Congress sends him.

 BK>  That and recognize the insanity of cutting taxes during a war.

You don't know what you are talking about.

Ed

-- 
"The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is
to fill the world with fools." --Herbert Spencer
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