Dr. Paul A. Ibbetson

The political wrangling over what to do with the Bush-era tax cuts that are set to expire has created another opportunity to observe the ideological difference in perspectives between liberals and conservatives on the issue of taxes. Most importantly, it highlights differences that go beyond differing blueprints for the economic future of the country and more to the contrasting viewpoints in how taxes should be used in modern America.

Out of the gate, liberals in the Democratic Party were resistant to extending the tax cuts in general. After the first rounds of debate it appeared that Democrats were willing to appease Americans with tax cut extensions for all but the wickedly rich. The problem with that plan was that the wickedly rich, which were deemed by the Obama administration as those with an income exceeding $250,000 also included arguably as much as half of all small-business owners. Despite the extensive political quibbling over what percent of small businesses will be negatively affected with higher taxes in a weak economy, there is an equally important question which is seldom addressed: What about the rich?

While many conservatives bring forth consumption tax proposals, these ideas receive quick and absolute rejection from the Democratic Party. Yes, liberals love the current system and pursue leveling taxes on the living and the dead with equal vigor. However, the left places their taxation efforts most forcefully on those who have achieved the highest economic levels in the nation. Why? If you listen to liberals such as Barack Obama, you will hear the argument that the rich can simply absorb additional taxes without any adverse effects. Under the surface of these arguments is a not-so-subtle hostility towards the rich. It is as if high income earners have dodged doing their fair bit in the tax department and liberals are just balancing the scales a little more in these hard times. Are they right? Are the rich deserving of a little less cash? Can the government do a few more wonderful things with a little bit more of their money? Let’s look at the economic facts.

In 2007 economist Stephen Moore addressed the same general set of questions and found that the top 1 percent of income earners pay 37 percent of the income taxes collected by the government. The top 10 percent of wage earners — that’s the filthy rich if you are wondering — pay almost 70% of total income taxes. The bottom 50 percent of wage earners pay only 3 percent of the taxes. Yes, in case the point has been overlooked, the rich pay the lion’s share of taxes in America and in doing so, received more money back from the Bush tax cuts than middle-class Americans who paid less in taxes, and the poor who don’t pay taxes at all. What is not talked about is what Moore observed as the final outcome of tax cuts regarding the rich. That is, when the wealthy got tax breaks they hired more employees as they expanded their businesses and in the end, they paid more taxes. More taxes to the tune of $100 billion recorded by the IRS in 2005. The number of tax filers who made a taxable income of more than $1 million went up from 180,000 in 2003 to over 300,000 in 2005. Yes, you guessed it, more people improving their financial income led to an increase in tax collections.

So, if tax cuts throughout history have created economic prosperity when enacted by presidents from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, why do liberals still oppose them with all their might? The answer most likely has some complexity. It may be in part that liberals do not grasp the unintended consequences of economically strangling high wage earners that employ hundreds, if not thousands. It may be that liberals are inflicted with a form of economic nearsightedness that denies them the vision to see that in attempting to help the less fortunate at the expense of the wealthy, they are prolonging the economic misfortune for those that wish to find jobs in this country. Remember, a poor man or woman has never given anybody a job.

Unfortunately, with these possible explanations we must also entertain the conclusion that much of the aversion to tax cuts for high wage earners in America stems from a liberal hatred of economic achievement, the achievement our capitalistic society is founded on. Why else would liberals block programs that in the end would bring in more taxes? With economic prosperity come additional freedoms to buy what you want, to live as you wish, and to steadily turn away from a reliance of government intervention. This is not the Democratic way; in fact, it appears that they see taxes as a way to punish success, a billy club to beat down those that they see as having too much of the American dream. Small-business owners making over $250,000 a year may find themselves to be collateral damage as liberals attempt to attack the achievement of higher income earners. In the end, we all suffer.

This just in: TSA airport security personnel have now reaffirmed, after thousands of overtly aggressive body pat-downs, that elderly grandmothers and little children are still not attempting to commit terrorist attacks by carrying explosives onto planes. The growing discontent at the government’s new intrusive security measures are now being seen throughout the country. The reasons people don’t like it can be broken down into three areas of discussion: efficiency, invasiveness, and the strategic end results.

No one likes to be held up at the airport; however, most flyers are willing to accept delays that can be logically explained. For example, if the landing gear is about to fall off the plane, people have no qualms and show no resistance in patiently waiting while the issue is resolved. That is, people want to be safe while flying and will readily accept being inconvenienced if a reasonable case can be made for the situation. The problem comes when there cannot be a reasonable articulation made between extreme flyer inconvenience and passenger safety. Imagine if a plane with landing gear problems required all passengers to have a forced colonoscopy. The differential between the observed airline safety issue and the requirements placed on passengers would be so great that most flyers would refuse to comply. Welcome to the modern world of TSA security measures and what have become the unfriendly skies.

Prospective passengers in many airports are now being faced with having to go through full-body scanners that render the flyer practically naked to be photographed and observed by strangers. The long-term physical effects of radiation exposure from these scanners are unknown, along with their usefulness in detecting plastics and other materials terrorists use. As of now, full-body scanners do not make a case for security that equals or surpasses their offensive nature. Without more evidence of their practicality, TSA might as well request naked photographs of all passengers at the gate and save them the time of passing through the costly and time-consuming machines. However, the full-body scanners are quickly falling behind in public distaste to the full body pat down.

By now most Americans who have not experienced their own horror story at the airport have heard the tales of those who have been poked, prodded, and even fondled while trying to get on a flight. Stories of the handicapped being forced to stand on defective limbs while security personnel inspect their leg braces or the cancer survivor made to remove her prosthetic breast for inspection brings home the egregious nature of the new protocols. With the current system that is now being put into place, TSA cannot expect future increases in efficiency to mitigate the invasive nature of the experience to any noticeable degree.

It is in the strategic nature of the enhanced security protocol at the airports, and the argument made to passengers for their compliance that TSA utterly fails to make their case. They fail not just in the possession of full-body scanners or the implementation of enhanced pat-downs, TSA fails because blanket implementation of these protocols does not give airline passengers a degree of safety equal to or surpassing the violation of human dignity that they entail. Individuals seeking alternatives, such as Republican Representative John Mica of Florida, say the answer can be found in replacing TSA agents with private security guards. Mica’s reasoning for such changes is based on the idea that private industry through competition would increase quality and efficiency.

This is possible, but only if several fundamental strategies are put into place. More diligent inspection of passports and pre-travel documents along with observations of passenger activities and actions at the airport will go far toward true airline security. This goes hand in hand with observing sets of characteristics that identify what has been congruent with modern-day terrorists. At this point in time, this means placing higher scrutiny on Muslim males that are traveling from known terrorist locations over elderly American grandmothers in walkers flying to see their grandchildren for the holidays. To call this racist is to be misguided. To deplete critical security resources to invasively search people who do not fit any criteria of a terrorist simply to be politically correct is more than wasteful, it is reckless. It is reckless because it places all passengers at higher risk as security personnel decrease their attentiveness while searching individuals who are obvious non-threats.

Those that would place all airline travelers in front of the full-body scanners and rubber gloves of TSA personnel cite the case that if the current profile of the modern terrorist is actually observed instead of denied through blanket security procedures that those that wish to do Americans harm will simply use different actors to conduct terrorist activities. The current evidence does not support this line of thinking for terroristic airline incidents. If this does change and grandmothers, Girl Scouts, American vets, and even farm boys from Kansas like myself fall under the profile of terrorists who blow up planes, then adaptations can be made, and protocols altered. The new protocols would come with, most importantly, a logical argument to be made for the reasonable balance of security measures and airline safety. Right now, we are all getting the equivalent of the unwarranted colonoscopy.

During the recent mid-term election, voters across the country voiced their will on more than just which politicians or political party they wanted to see in power for the next term. Voters in Oklahoma voted on whether or not Sharia, Islamic law, should or should not be used or considered within the state’s court system. Seventy percent — that’s right, seven out of ten Oklahoma voters — said no to Sharia and international law, and within days Oklahoma’s chapter of CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, filed a lawsuit against the Oklahoma State Election Board. As reported by Rachel Slajda of TPM Muckracker, Muneer Awad, director of the Oklahoma branch of CAIR who filed the suit, says that the new Oklahoma law violates his First Amendment rights, including his personal desires for actions to be taken after his death.

Two questions should be forwarded to Muneer Awad, American Muslims and visitors who feel that a rejection of Sharia law within the American court system is worthy of court litigation. The first question is, what are the true motivations for the opposition of the American justice system applying its own laws within a sovereign nation? The second question is, just what country do you think you are living in? Omar Sacirbey from the Religion News Service reports a conversation with Sarah Albahadily, a 27-year-old American-born Muslim woman, who said after Oklahomans voted on State Question 755, barring Sharia law from American courts, that she felt less at home in the state. Specifically, she said, “It’s disheartening, even though it was expected, you still feel the blow.” Statements like these leave me in a state of bewilderment. How can the enforcement of American law within America be felt as an emotional blow? What would be the end result of subverting American law with a Middle Eastern form of law such as Sharia?

In a summary supplied by the Council on Foreign Relations, Islamic Law in Sharia, known as “the path” in Arabic, is described as a guide for all aspects of a Muslim’s daily life. The conflicts coming from having Sharia in American law would be immediate. There is little doubt that to place a foreign legal system that dictates all matters of familial, financial, religious and criminal matters will bring drastic, detrimental conflict to the American legal justice system. From the background supplied by the CFR, we only have to look to what punishments are called for under “hadd” crimes as prescribed by Sharia law to bring the point home.

Five different crimes fall under the “hadd” category: unlawful sexual intercourse, false accusation of unlawful sexual intercourse, the consumption of alcohol, theft and highway robbery. Punishments for such offenses under Sharia may include flogging, stoning, amputation, exile or execution. Sound like the American way? Sounds more like a trip back in the Dark Ages. Sharia also embodies the well-documented honor killings for daughters and wives who were deemed to have brought shame to the family, not to mention genital mutilation, adolescent marriages, polygamy and gender-biased inheritance rules. Do people like Muneer Awad feel that these aspects of Sharia are necessary for First Amendment rights in America’s Constitution to be valid? Would subverting American law for individuals who commit honor killings or genital mutilations add to the “homey” aspects of the Sooner state? While the dangerous trend these days is to attack the exercising of state rights, Oklahoma voters deserve answers to questions such as these before their voices, and their state, are blacklisted alongside others such as Arizona.

Some that may wish to push the Sharia agenda at worst, or to be apathetic to its dangers at best, say that Oklahoma’s lawmakers and voters are premature to address this issue as it has not yet been a factor in Oklahoma courts. Really, this question is of little importance when compared to Oklahoma’s right to deal as a sovereign state with the issues it finds important. If we were to poll the estimated 30,000 Oklahoma Muslims along with Oklahoma’s total population of 3.5 million citizens, I believe that Sharia law would be strongly rejected by a majority of all Oklahoma residents. But even so, groups like CAIR and their lackeys in the American Civil Liberties Union are framing the issue of the affirmation of the American court system as unconstitutional and the safeguarding of all American people as an exercise in Islamophobia. It appears that something dark and sinister may be afoot within the upcoming Oklahoma Sharia litigation, and Americans should be privy to the truth. Groups like CAIR and the ACLU should be made to more fully explain their motivations for opposing state’s right in Oklahoma and its people’s desire to uphold American law.

There is just something about humor that makes it inviting in almost every situation. We love to have our funny bone tickled in so many ways, and it is both the joke and its creative delivery that keeps us coming back for more. Good comedy has the power to transcend many a strong grievance and many a harsh battleground. Take politics for instance. There is seldom found a more divisive subject that can be broached between two individuals. Politics has the power to set lifelong friends to physical blows at a high school reunion, or deacons to highly charged whispers of anger while passing the collection plate in church. I think you know what I am saying, and I bet you have been there before. If you haven’t, you will be, as assuredly as death and taxes, but there I go talking politics again.

The point is that humor serves as a “pressure relief valve” that allows us all to laugh at ourselves as well as those on the other side of the aisle. Being able to do both is important. Knowing when to do it is a step toward the divine. Everyone seems to have the ability to laugh at their adversaries; however, many do it in ways that demean themselves and the comedic process. When liberals laugh in a red-eyed, frothing frenzy during Michael Moore films they are not paying homage to comedic flair, but instead are simply wallowing in the filth of partisan anger. This is because Michael Moore films are not funny, but are sad in that “I just ran over your puppy and I think I will blame it on your neighbor because he is a successful capitalist” kind of way. To applaud poor comedic attempts, or just plain acts of political sniping, is attacking one’s own sense of where true comedy resides.

Then there are true comedians that test our ability to discern funny from mean. Seth MacFarlane is such a comedic talent. Despite being your typical over-the-top liberal activist, he is truly talented. MacFarlane has collaborated in many very funny and creative television shows such as Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken and Dexter’s Laboratory. MacFarlane’s outspoken support for gay rights, atheism, and the legalization of marijuana do not affect his ability to make us laugh when he creates something that is actually funny. Even his adult comedies Family Guy and American Dad are creative and humorous at many turns. Yes I said it, he is funny here too. Unfortunately, MacFarlane brings justified public anger upon himself in the political arena, when he does things such as attacking Sarah Palin’s child with Down syndrome.

In this case it is not that conservatives don’t have a sense of humor, as many from the right can and do laugh while watching “American Dad,” with MacFarlane’s indirect joke-poking at former president George W. Bush. What MacFarlane failed to comprehend was that attacking Down syndrome children would not be funny no matter which side of the political aisle you are on. The point is that when it comes to humor, Macfarlane often succeeds and should be acknowledge as funny despite being a liberal. Conversely, when he steps away from creating humor, and is consumed by his liberal nature and becomes mean, he should be acknowledged as a loser.

Thus enter Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and “Team Sanity.” The liberal comedic duo of over-the-top Colbert with his “ultra-conservative” funnyman shtick and Stewart with his subconscious tendency to be an “angry little man” are running around the country to locations such as the National Mall with their “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” campaign. Many parts were really funny. There I said it once again. Liberals can be funny and most often it is when they are not being mean. While the event had the feel of comedy, even though it was liberal comedy, John Stewart still found a way of taking a person’s smile and turning it upside down with a liberal diatribe about how there is no true division in the country and that negative affairs within the United States are being overblown. This, like Michael Moore and the nasty shades of MacFarlane, kills the event for comedy-seeking conservatives, the same conservatives that may at times flip to Comedy Central and have at least a momentary chuckle. Stewart failed at the National Mall, not just for being wrong about the world in which he lives — we can forgive him that, after all, he is a modern-day liberal. However, we cannot forgive him for not being funny about it.

The point of importance is that political persuasion should not be the gauge by which we decide where humor is found. If it is funny, we should laugh, even if we are at times laughing at ourselves. If it is not funny, to treat it as such, despite the political direction in which the failed attempt is directed, is to purposely demean oneself. It is laughing to the point of hurting one’s dignity.

I once knew a guy who was about 50 pounds overweight. Any time a friend or family member would address him on the issue of cutting out the sweets, he would get indignant and quickly inform inquiring souls that he was completely fit in all areas except his midriff, which he would address in his own good time. We might surmise that from this gentleman’s thinking he thought his body was nothing short of a series of physical quadrants of which he had worked to address all but a final set of coordinates: his stomach. More than likely, the man was just fat and did not like being told so.

Brian Montopoli of CBS News tells us that National Public Radio no longer goes by that name; it’s NPR now. Well, I mean, the legal name is still National Public Radio as it has been for the last 40 years but they now request their brand name “NPR” be the title spoken on air. Why? Like a fat man demanding that he be called “Speedo-challenged” instead of simply overweight, National Public Radio is trying to run the fat-man scam on Americans. Montopoli talks about conservative pundits like Sarah Palin who call for cutting off public funding to National Public Radio and he insinuates that Palin is misguided as the federal funds the non-profit organization receives are considered by him as minimal. While the overall percentage may be less than 10 percent of their total budget, NPR receives millions of public tax dollars yearly. The case Montopoli forwards is as compelling an argument as when our gentleman friend with the mild protuberance tells us he has reduced his daily cupcake intake from twelve to nine of the tasty treats. Of course, the point is that he should not eat any, especially if we the American people have to flip the bill for the indulgence.

The public funding issue with National Public Radio comes to the forefront because of the firing of NPR contributor Juan Williams. Williams, who had been employed by NPR for a decade, was fired for saying that he gets nervous when he sees passengers in Muslim clothing on a plane. Not only was Williams fired by phone without an option to talk to upper-level NPR staff, a simple courtesy to a journalist of his standing, he was described as psychologically impaired. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said that Williams’ beliefs should stay between him and “his psychiatrist or his publicist.” The issue here goes beyond the viciousness of the Juan Williams’ job slaying. It goes beyond the fascist nature of NPR and the hypocrisy of such liberal organizations who lament their support for diversity as long as that diversity stays off Fox News. The issue goes as far as asking if Americans should have to fund a liberal radio station such as NPR.

NPR should be allowed to be as liberal as they wish, as fascist as the law will allow — if their product is viable within the free market. It’s a free country, but they should not be allowed to push their liberal agenda on the American people’s dime. Not on one single taxpayer’s dime. That is the issue at hand. That is what exacerbates the Williams tragedy. Montopoli alludes to the idea that despite NPR’s vicious attack against a liberal on its own payroll, all is well because Williams has just signed a new contract with Fox News. Of course, this is a diversion from the extended “belly” of the problem. The problem is that National Public Radio, (NPR, if that sounds more private market to you) continues to be fattened with tax dollars they do not deserve. They should be forced to sink or swim in the private market — you know, the real private market. If NPR can flourish within its liberal scheme without a government handout taken from both liberals and conservatives in the country, the opposition has no choice but to accept its existence and engage it in the private market. However, if NPR flies solo within the free market and the wind beneath its wings lifts it only as high as “Air America,” then we will know it should have never have been around in the first place. The free market has a way of taking care of dead weight. Now, the American people have the opportunity to address this issue. To do anything less is simply to keep loading the plate of the skinny fat man.