The Press-Dispatch
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/106438
Opinion C-2 Wednesday, January 30, 2013 The Press-Dispatch Observations by Thomas Sowell Do gun control laws control guns? The gun control controversy is only the latest of many issues to be debated almost solely in terms of fixed preconceptions, with little or no examination of hard facts. Media discussions of gun control are dominated by two factors: the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment. But the over-riding factual question is whether gun control laws actually reduce gun crimes in general or murder rates in particular. If, as gun control advocates claim, gun control laws really do control guns and save lives, there is nothing to prevent repealing the Second Amendment, any more than there was anything to prevent repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that created Prohibition. But, if the hard facts show that gun con- Eyeing the golden goose By Ed Feulner Are tax hikes on the way? Some federal lawmakers hope so. "It's a great opportunity to get us some more revenue," Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) recently said of the upcoming debate over the federal budget. You know what that means: calls to raise taxes on the rich. Lawmakers can't seem to refrain from eyeing the golden goose. It seems fair to most Americans that those who earn more should pay more taxes. But how much more? In a report that drew on 2006 tax data, Heritage Foundation scholar Curtis Dubay showed that a family in the top 20 percent of income-earners earned 50 percent more than a family in the next 20 percent, but paid 253 percent more in taxes. Even more strikingly, a family's income in the top 20 percent income bracket was 122 percent higher than a family in the third 20 percent bracket. Yet it paid a staggering 943 percent more in income taxes. Are these huge differences justified? Do they help make America a more just society, or is their real purpose to help politicians win votes by redistributing other people's incomes? One way of making sure the rich pay more is through a proportional tax, also known as a flat tax. With a 10 percent flat tax, for example, someone earning $40,000 would pay $4,000 in taxes, while someone earning $80,000 would pay $8,000. The United States, however, has a progressive income tax. The tax rate you pay depends on how much you earn. The more you earn, the higher your rate. The people who pay the highest rates are often unfairly vilified. But they shouldn't be. "In America, 'the rich' are overwhelmingly people—entrepreneurs, small businessmen, corporate executives, doctors, lawyers, etc.—who have gained their higher incomes through intelligence, imagination and hard work," the late Robert Bork once pointed out. Depriving these Americans of their hard-earned financial rewards through higher tax rates does not seem particularly moral. Rather, it seems unjust. The moral argument against progressive taxation is strongly reinforced by the economic argument. As tax rates at the higher end go up, incentives to work, save and invest go down. As a result, fewer new jobs are created. Both rich and poor wind up worse off. Even small changes in the tax code can have a major impact. For example, shortly after he became New York City's mayor, Rudy Giuliani cut the city's hotel tax from 6 percent to 5 percent. "Within months, net revenue from the hotel tax was actually higher at 5 percent than it had been at 6 percent, since far more visitors were coming to the city," he later said. True reform will move us toward a flatter tax code. "Under a flatter tax system, those who pay more income still pay more taxes, but that difference will be more proportional to income," Dubay writes. "A code more in line with the flat tax is necessary to remove the barriers that Continued on page 3 The no-spin zone—by Bill O'Reilly Pumping up the liberalism So now the president is a committed man of the left. No longer is he faking moderation or even trying to bring the nation "together." Nope. As he made clear in his inauguration speech, Barack Obama is dedicating himself to achieving "social justice" no matter what the cost. And the cost is high. The annual federal deficit is more than $1 trillion, with the national debt approaching $17 trillion. Just last week, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office warned once again that federal spending is "unsustainable." That means if government spending is not curtailed and quickly, the U.S. dollar could collapse. But you would not know that by listening to the president's address. He was decidedly upbeat when telling the nation that more needs to be done (code for spending) to ensure "equality." That's the big leftwing word these days: "equality." But can we be real here for a moment? Does anyone, even those of you living in San Francisco, believe that an American who earns a Ph.D. in economics is going to be equal to the high school dropout in the marketplace? Anyone? Bueller? So let's drop the equality business at least in the capitalist arena. The strong and smart prosper; the weak and lazy fail. But not in Obama world. Not there. The president sees his mandate as "providing" for those who can't cut it. He is the biggest spender of all the presidents in the nation's history by far. Obama is proud of his belief that government knows best. When he told the world that individuals are not totally responsible for their personal success, that government has a major role in it, many Americans were taken aback. But Obama sincerely believes that. Let me prove him wrong with a vivid comparison. In 1979, a man named Rupert Murdoch started a company that today employs 48,000 workers worldwide. The employees of News Corporation, of which I am one, pay taxes and support families. The company gives us an opportunity to succeed on our own without any financial assistance from the government. In turn, we provide assets to the government. We don't take from it. Some of our tax dollars go to pay the salaries and benefits of government workers. Since he was elected, Obama has increased the federal payroll by more than 130,000. Most of those folks work hard, but again, they are paid by private sector workers. So which scenario is better for America? The private sector situation, or the expanding government workforce? If you don't know the answer to that question, you don't want to know. Obama is a utopian at heart. He wants to improve the lives of the downtrodden, which is a good thing. But he doesn't understand that damaging the free marketplace in pursuit of "social justice" will eventually harm those he wants to help. The nation's crushing debt is a tsunami brewing offshore. Let's hope Obama wises up before we all get swept away. Points to ponder—by Ford Bond No Shortcut to The Top Last fall, I had the opportunity to visit Hawaii for a few days, and no trip to that "paradise" is complete without visiting Diamondhead on the island of Oahu. As with all mountains, people want to get to the top to see the view. The trail to the summit was built courtesy of the Army in 1908 as part of Oahu's coastal defense system. The climb to the 560 foot summit is three-quarters of a mile and is physically challenging. There are steep slopes, sharp narrow turns, switch- backs, a tunnel, and a long flight of stairs one must negotiate. What is of interest is at one juncture, the hiker can go to the left and continue the switchback pattern, or they can traverse some very steep stairs to the top. Years ago at this juncture someone painted a sign which said, "The easy way (to the left) or the hard way (to the right and up the steep stairs)." As I climbed the stairs (the hard way), I recognized an analogy here about life. As humans, each of us are incessantly faced with op- A woman's perspective—by Mona Charen Who's a coward? Who said this about a world leader: He's a "political coward—an essentially unchallenged leader who nevertheless is unwilling to lead or spend political capital to advance the cause of compromise"? Was it perhaps John Boehner describing Barack Obama? No, though the shoe would certainly fit. It was Barack Obama describing Binyamin Netanyahu. This insight into Obama's views comes from an interview with the Atlantic Magazine's Jeffrey Goldberg. Let's pause for second to consider the gall. Mr. Obama knows full well that the United States confronts an unavoidable debt crisis if our government does not reform entitlements. Rather than lead, Obama has peddled denial ("We don't have a spending problem"), distortion (suggesting that Republicans who want spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling are "not paying America's bills") and demonization of the rich. What wouldn't Netanyahu give for such manageable problems? The prime minister of Israel is confronted by deadly threats in all directions. Iran, whose leaders routinely threaten to destroy the Jewish state (the "moderate" Hashemi Rafsanjani noted that "one bomb" would destroy all of Israel so "it is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality"), is marching, seemingly inexorably with Obama's reelection, toward a nuclear weapon. Syria is in flames, with the outcome uncertain. Lebanon is controlled by Hezbollah. Iraq's future stability is in doubt with the total withdrawal of U.S. forces. Egypt, whose three-decade peace treaty with Israel offered a certain trol laws do not actually control guns, but instead lead to more armed robberies and higher murder rates after law-abiding citizens are disarmed, then gun control laws would be a bad idea, even if there were no Second Amendment and no National Rifle Association. The central issue boils down to the question: What are the facts? Yet there are many zealots who seem utterly unconcerned about facts or about their own lack of knowledge of facts. There are people who have never fired a shot in their life who do not hesitate to declare how many bullets should be the Continued on page 3 tenuous security to the Jewish state, is now in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood. And while Obama's Director of National Intelligence James Clapper described the Brotherhood in 2011 as "largely secular," the true nature of the regime is dawning on even the most obtuse. There was Mohammed Morsi's power grab in late November, when he attempted to grant himself sweeping authority. There is the persecution of Christians at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood (sometimes including crucifixion). And there is the 2010 video that surfaced recently of Morsi himself describing Israelis as bloodsuckers, warmongers and "the descendants of apes and pigs." According to Goldberg, Obama has said repeatedly, "Israel doesn't know what its best interests are." With each new settlement announcement, Obama believes, "Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation." Obama is revealing his ignorance and arrogance. The question of settlements has not prevented the Palestinians from negotiating in the past. The PA decided to make halting settlements a condition of negotiation after Obama himself insisted upon it. They could hardly do less. By big-footing it, Obama impeded the cause of negotiations. Israel has built most settlements in regions quite close to the 1967 borders that everyone believes would be incorporated into Israel anyway. As the Washington Post noted in an editorial implicitly critical of Obama, "80 percent of [Israeli settlers] could be included in Israel if the country annexed just more than 4 percent of the West Bank—less than the 5 percent proposed by President Bill Clinton 12 years ago." Obama himself has predicted that there would be "land swaps" as part of any final agreement. Besides, why is it considered out of the question that some Jewish settlements would remain in a future Palestinian state? There are more than a million Israeli Arabs living throughout the Jewish state. Has Mr. Obama not considered that Israel has dismantled settlements in the Sinai and Gaza? The Gaza withdrawal brought not peace but unrelenting missile fire. The jury is out on the Sinai withdrawal. Like his colleagues on the left, and like his nominee for Defense Secretary, Obama believes that Israel's vulnerability is her own fault. He utterly misconceives the entire conflict, which is not about "two states for two peoples" (which Israel has repeatedly endorsed and sacrificed for) but about the stubborn Palestinian rejection of Israel's existence. Evidence for this is so abundant—from official PA maps that show no Israel, to Palestinian TV programs that laud terrorists as heroes, to a recent poll showing that 56 percent of Palestinians oppose a twostate solution—that ignorance cannot be explained as benign. Just in the past week, Mahmoud Abbas decided not to accept hundreds of thousands of Syrian Palestinian refugees into the land he controls because Israel asked that they sign a waiver renouncing a "right of return" to the Jewish state. He was explicit: It's "better they die in Syria than give up their right of return." That's what Israel must contend with. Perhaps worst of all is the tacit hostility of Israel's formerly most steadfast friend. portunities and choices to which path to follow—the easy way or the hard way. The pay-off was that by taking the stairs, you could reach the highest point inside an old gun turret, which could not be reached by taking the easy path. As I climbed the hard way with my brother, we talked about how Jesus spoke of two paths: . . . "Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able . . ." and "Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it." It is worth noting that this narrow or hard road (path) is defined as opposite to the wide and easy road. Though the narrow path seems to be the hardest, it has the best long term payoff; whereas, the easier narrow road is preferred by most, yet its payoff is only temporary. Sadly, the high or narrow road is not frequently traveled. Within all crafts, trades, and professions, there is a temptation to "cheat to get ahead." This is not just a modern phenomenon. His- tory is awash with stories of men cheating, backstabbing, and using skullduggery to get ahead. For example, during the ancient Greek Olympics of 388 BC, controversy and allegations of cheating were brought to light when Eupholus of Thessaly was publicly disgraced for bribing three boxers to "take a dive." He was fined, and the money was used to erect a statue of Zeus outside the stadium to both appease the gods and to warn others who might also be tempted to cheat. As time went on, there was a line of these statues erected called "zanes," with each bearing a detailed description of the offense. The Apostle Paul was mindful of cheating in sporting events and used that analogy when he urged Christian is to walk honestly: "if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules" (2 Timothy 2:5). We in the modern era almost deify professional athletes and act stunned when one falls from grace when it is proven he/she has cheatContinued on page 3 The P Dispatch ress- MR. AND MRS. FRANK HEURING, PUBLISHERS ANDREW G. HEURING, EDITOR JOHN B. HEURING, ADVERTISING MANAGER Wednesday, January 30, 2013 Entered at the Post Office in Petersburg, Indiana for transmission through the mails as Periodical Mail, Postage paid at Petersburg, Indiana. Published weekly. Change of Address—Subscribers changing addresses will please give old address as well as new one along with phone number. We cannot guarantee prompt change unless this is done. Postmaster: send changes to Post Office Box 68, Petersburg, Indiana 47567-0068. Phone 354-8500 • FAX—354-2014 P.O. 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