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Commentary

RINO Mitt Romney now open to European-style VAT tax

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ABC News reports.

Excerpt:

In a December 24 story in the Wall Street Journal, Romney is described not favoring the idea of “layering a VAT onto the current income tax system. But he adds that, philosophically speaking, a VAT might work as a replacement for some part of the tax code, ‘particularly at the corporate level,’ as Paul Ryan proposed several years ago. What he doesn’t do is rule a VAT out.”

A value added tax, or VAT, is a form of the consumption tax in which the tax is levied based on a product’s price, not including the cost of materials, that originated in and is popular in Europe, imposed by the European Commission, and the governments of France and the UK, among others.

Gingrich’s campaign was not the only one to notice. The American Enterprise Institution‘s James Pethokoukis wrote that “(m)any conservatives/libertarians simply hate, hate, hate the idea of a VAT….They view it as a way to fund a massive expansion of government. I would be surprised if those quotes don’t end up in a 30-second, anti-Romney ad in Iowa or New Hampshire”

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist once called the VAT “a European-style sales tax. It’s assessed on the profits generated at every stage of production (raw material, manufacturer, wholesaler, retailer, etc.), so there is constant reporting and payment. As such, it’s an extremely efficient money machine for big government. The VAT is embedded inside the price of a good … As such, people forget they pay it, and European governments have found it too easy to raise the tax repeatedly over time.”

People think that Romney should be the candidate because he “is the most electable”. But is that true?

Seven reasons why Romney’s electability is exaggerated

John Hawkins writing for Townhall.com lists the seven reasons. (H/T Right Wing News)

Reasons 2 and 3:

2) He’s a proven political loser: There’s a reason Mitt Romney has been able to say that he’s “not a career politician.” It’s because he’s not very good at politics. He lost to Ted Kennedy in 1994. Although he did win the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002, he did it without cracking 50% of the vote. Worse yet, he left office as the 48th most popular governor in America and would have lost if he had run again in 2006. Then, to top that off, he failed to capture the GOP nomination in 2008. This time around, despite having almost every advantage over what many people consider to be a weak field of candidates, Romney is still desperately struggling. Choosing Romney as the GOP nominee after running up that sort of track record would be like promoting a first baseman hitting .225 in AAA to the majors.

3) Running weak in the southern states: Barack Obama won North Carolina, Virginia, and Florida in 2008 and you can be sure that he will be targeting all three of those states again. This is a problem for Romney because he would be much less likely than either Gingrich or Perry to carry any of those states. Moderate northern Republicans have consistently performed poorly in the south and Romney won’t be any exception. That was certainly the case in 2008 when both McCain and Huckabee dominated Romney in primaries across the south. Mitt didn’t win a single primary in a southern state and although he finished second in Florida, he wasn’t even competitive in North Carolina or Virginia. Since losing any one of those states could be enough to hand the election to Obama in a close race, Mitt’s weakness there is no small matter.

For my own part, I find it surprising that people who are ostensibly pro-life are willing to appoint a Republican candidate who has no pro-life record. Until he started running for the Presidency, Mitt Romney was 100% pro-abortion. That’s 12 years of abortion advocacy. His record is pro-abortion. Many of the other candidates, especially Santorum and Bachmann, have a pro-life record. Newt has a 98% pro-life voting record. So why are we settling for someone who has a question mark on social issues?

News

Obama will ask for $1.2 trillion dollar increase in the debt limit

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Obama Economic Record November 2011
Obama Economic Record November 2011

From Reuters.

Excerpt:

The White House plans to ask Congress by the end of the week for an increase in the government’s debt ceiling… according to a senior Treasury Department official on Tuesday.

The approval is expected to go through without a challenge, given that Congress is in recess until later in January and the request is in line with an agreement to keep the U.S. government funded into 2013.

The debt is projected to fall within $100 billion of the current cap by December 30, when the United States has $82 billion in interest on its debt and payments such as Social Security coming due. President Barack Obama is expected to ask for authority to increase the borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion, part of the spending authority that was negotiated between Congress and the White House this summer.

[…]The debt limit currently stands at $15.194 trillion and would increase to $16.394 trillion with the request.

And yet some people apparently think that he is doing a good job with the economy.

Perhaps this story provides a clue about why things have gone so badly:

After an hour of hiking, President Obama Monday got down to the serious business at hand, heading out to golf for the second day in his first three days of vacation. He was back on the course at Marine Corps Base Hawaii.

With this one, Obama reaches a new milestone, having gone golfing 90 times in less than three years as president. That’s about three months of golf, given that the excursions generally take about five hours – much of the useful portion of the day.

What’s more, it’s the 32nd time he’s been on the links this year, a record for the president. His 32 outings eclipses the 2010 mark of 30 and is far ahead of his 2009 tally of 28 rounds as president.

And remember, there are still five days left in the year for Obama to pad his new record, which he almost certainly will.

Along for Monday’s round were three of Obama’s Hawaii friends, Mike Ramos, Greg Orme and Bobby Titcomb. The latter, you may remember, was arrested in April in a prostitution sting.

It’s the children who are going to be paying for Obama’s spending spree. Remember, the last Republican budget was in 2007 – and the deficit then was $160 billion. Then the Democrats took over the House and the Senate and the deficit rose dramatically and is not going down in the near future.

News

Christmas not so merry for Christians living under Islamic rule

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I found that video on Right Scoop via Director Blue.

Gates of Vienna has more news coverage, and they are claiming that the death toll in Nigeria is at least 60 people from 5 separate bombings.

Here’s a longer essay about the problem from Dave Warren. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The “Arab Spring,” which was welcomed this year as an expression of “democracy” by the West’s political, media, and chattering classes, has brought social convulsion to one Arab state after another. Against the background of what is to my view instead a large catastrophe, Christian communities that have existed in each state since centuries before the arrival of Islam, are being eliminated.

…[W]ith the Americans gone, Iraq now slips the rest of the way off the world media map. It may crawl back on with full-scale civil war. And perhaps, eventually, notice will be taken that Iran’s revolutionary regime, already represented within Maliki’s entourage, is using the disorder to attach Iraq as a satellite. This is not something even Shia Iraqis could want; but they will have it as a consequence of disintegrative war between Sunni and Shia, Arab and Kurd, abetted by an utterly corrupt and dysfunctional “democratic” political class.

Meanwhile, tonight’s Midnight Mass has been cancelled, so far as I can see through the Internet, at Christian churches throughout the country. Estimates of the number of Christians who have fled Iraq now approach or exceed one million; and the reason for their leaving may be read in graffiti sprayed over their empty and assaulted churches. This persistently reminds worshippers of past massacres, and promises they will be next.

The collapse of once-peaceful Egypt into disorder has had similar effects, as the old secular military establishment bids to retain some semblance of its former power and pomposity, while the Islamist parties sweep parliamentary elections.

In the first moments of Egypt’s “Arab Spring,” triggered by the country’s relatively tiny and secular middle class, Coptic Christians were already feeling the rise in heat. But there were several fine displays of solidarity, in which leading Muslims attended church services in defiance of Islamist terror threats.

As ever, in revolutionary situations, the heroic phase ended quickly. We’re advancing now through the squalid phases. For the safety of their parishioners, night church services are already switched to broad daylight, and as in Iraq, there are ever-more-cumbersome security measures to pass through, to get into a church at all.

Nothing can be done, or more certainly, nothing will be done by our own “progressive” governing classes, even to anticipate the coming fallout.

Something to keep in your prayers. And when you get the chance to vote, keep in mind Christians living in other countries where there is no religious liberty. I find it interesting to note that the two situations Warren raised have different solutions. In Iraq, the right thing to do was to keep our forces in there to stabilize the region. In Egypt, the solution was not to get involved at all.