A Look at Bloggy Goodness

Well, it’s been a few weeks since Mikey started up his “Mike and Friends” blog.  And I must confess myself ... bemused.  Moore actually doesn’t do too much blogging himself.  The blog is basically a dumping ground for every far far Left whiner, ingrate, ignoramus and conspiracy theorist who can put a title after their name.  It’s a really depressing read as every single post, it seems, is about how much America sucks.

Here, for example, is Donna Smith, complaining about a fire fighter who can’t get a $22,000 test to see if his son has a rare form of Muscular Dystrophy.  I feel for him.  But if we had the socialized healthcare system she prefers, that test would probably not exist.  Smith manages to top herself by disparaging a man whose wife has cancer but believes he can handle it by himself.  Courage under adversity is seen as stupidity.

Here is Joan Wile, screaming about taxes:

Bucking the Tea Party and Right Winger presidential wannabes Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, and other advocates for the super rich at the expense of all the rest of us, the [Gray Panthers] have issued a proclamation outlining their proposals regarding tax cuts. Among their many resolutions is one demanding that the progressive taxation system practiced in many other developed democratic countries be adopted here.

We have such a system.  Tax rates vary from 10% for lower income to 35% for the upper incomes and many deductions are capped.  Moreover, we have a second tax system --- the Alternative Minimum Tax—designed to screw “the rich” even further.  According to the government’s own figures, the top 1% earn 19% of the income but pay 37% the tax.  The bottom half earn 13% of the income and pay 3% of the tax.  Libs will usually respond by talking about payroll taxes.  But since those taxes go to pay for your own retirement—and the benefits for the rich are capped—that doesn’t really wash.

Wile doesn’t even get that far, basically lamenting the Bush tax cuts going to the rich.  But that’s garbage too, since the tax cuts essentially removed millions of the poor from the tax rolls.  While the tax cuts for “the rich” would reduced federal revenues by $700 billion over the next decade, the tax cuts for the rest of the nation would reduce revenue by $3 trillion.  How is that regressive? Wile then goes on about rising income disparity, which is largely a myth created by people who don’t understand statistics (or actually, who probably do).  Then there’s this:

The Gray Panthers are tired of such statements as that of, for example, Newt Gingrich, “I think to raise taxes on people who create jobs in the middle of a 9.5 percent unemployment rate is, frankly, crazy.” Inasmuch as more and more corporations are transplanting jobs to low-wage workers in other countries, that comment seems a bit disingenuous. Our history has shown more than once that expanded wealth at the top does not trickle down into the pockets of the less fortunate.

First of all, corporations and small businesses that pay taxes as individuals are not the same thing.  Second, one reason jobs get moved overseas is because of our massive tax and regulator structure, which costs our economy $1.75 trillion a year, according to the WSJ.  Third, try to familiarize yourself with the explosion in class mobility that occurred in the wake of the Reagan tax cuts.

By comparison, Michael Moore’s calling out of liberals for going along with the evil Republicans’ diabolical plans to start a war they knew was bad for the country (or something) or his (hopefully) tongue-in-cheek conspiracy theories about Detroit sports are small potatoes.

We’ll keep a watch out for you, though, to see if anything really stupid turns up (it’s only a matter of time).  That’s what we do here—it says so right in the URL.