I am pleased as punch to present you with the first high-resolution video of Michele Bachmann!
You can click here for her video blog, where you’ll find more videos.
You can read the most recent post I wrote about her, which includes links to some of her best speeches, photos and interviews.
Please contribute to her 2010 campaign, if you can.
Watch this video by libertarian Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute. (H/T Power Line via ECM)
I normally don’t like these Dan Mitchell videos, but this one is better than the others I’ve seen at giving you a great introduction to so many useful topics.
The national sales tax would be a GREAT idea, if we went on to remove an equivalent amount of revenue from the income tax. It’s much better to tax consumption than productive work. But that’s not what the Democrats want to do with this value-added tax. They want both income and consumption taxes, so they get a new revenue stream and more money to buy votes from their favorite special interest groups.
Here is a Wall Street Journal article about the Democrats’ proposed VAT.
Excerpt:
The allure of a VAT for politicians is that it applies to every level of production or service, rakes in piles of money, and is largely hidden from those who ultimately pay it—namely, consumers. With a $9 trillion 10-year budget deficit, $4 trillion in spending in fiscal 2010 alone, and a $1 trillion (at a minimum) health-care entitlement in the wings, Mrs. Pelosi knows that not even the revenue from the expiration of the lower Bush tax rates in 2011 will cover the bills. Nearly every European country that has passed national health care has also eventually imposed a VAT, and it’s foolish to think the U.S. will be different.
Tax and spend.
Story from the National Post. (H/T No Apologies via Andrew)
Excerpt:
It is when Rev. Ezra Jin says there are about 3,000 underground Protestant church services being celebrated around the Chinese capital on this bright autumn Sunday, that you begin to get an idea of the leap of faith that is happening in this decidedly atheist country. Rev. Ezra is happily chatting in advance of his second service of the day at Beijing Zion Church, a grandiose name for the series of large and small conference rooms he presides over. They are located above a karaoke bar in an old-fashioned hotel deep in the Beijing suburbs. His is what is called a “house church.” It is not sanctioned by the Communist government, hence it is not legal. But as sometimes happens in China, it is tolerated – for the moment, anyway.
“For a long time, the government cracked down on house churches. But recently the situation changed,” he explained. “It has started to face up to the existence of house churches and make an effort to establish a formal relationship with them.” It’s not a perfect situation, he admits, but a vast improvement to what it was. “Ten years ago, house churches, like ours, wouldn’t dare to think they could have such a large space to develop,” he said. In recent years, “house” Protestants have been harassed, fined, beaten by police and even jailed for the temerity of shunning the officially sanctioned churches and starting their own.[…]”After 1949 [when the Communist Party came to power], all the old beliefs were cracked apart,” he says. “Then there was the Cultural Revolution and the ideals of Communism fell apart, too. So, all Chinese people just looked to money then. But in fact money couldn’t satisfy their spiritual needs.”
The breakdown in the national value systems led to “a crisis in belief,” he said, a void that religion is increasingly filling for many people.
Rev. Ezra notes that ancient Taoism and Buddhism are also experiencing a revival in China at the moment, but that Christianity, particularly Protestantism, is expanding the fastest of all.
[…]But from a congregation of “a dozen people in 2007,” Rev. Ezra now boasts 600 parishioners, a Sunday school, a marriage counselling service and a regime to train disciples to help with the parish work.
He is both enthusiastic and optimistic about what the future holds.
“Abroad is in what we call the post-religious era. But it is just the opposite here in China,” he said. “When the ideals of Communism were spent after 30 years, religion started to rejuvenate. Today it is an explosion that will last another 20 to 30 years. Religion will incrementally affect all of Chinese society.”
