NEW YORK - Why are Americans enraged? As this moribund economy limps through the third year of doldrums Americans are sick of having their hard-earned money swiped by Washington D.C.s Democrat-dominated political class which is clueless condescending and invariably costly.
Could anything but cluelessness explain what happened when Harvs Metro Car Wash in Sacramento owed the federal government precisely four pennies due to a mistaken tax return? Rather than shrug at a four-cent error the IRS dispatched two agents to deliver a letter by hand informing the owner of his tax debt.
They were deadly serious very aggressive Harvs proprietor Aaron Zeff told the Sacramento Bee. That was the first time he heard that his account was amiss. Indeed Zeff received an official letter last October saying that his business had filed all required returns and addressed any balances due.
Even more clueless if that is possible is the Obama Administrations War on Kindles. As the Washington Examiners Byron York reported several universities collaborated with Amazon to offer Kindles to students in a purely voluntary program to see if the electronic devices were a worthy alternative to traditional tree-killing textbooks.
Unfair! screamed the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division. It investigated Arizona State Case Western and other universities for possible discrimination against the blind. After all division chief Tom Perez told a House hearing We must remain vigilant to ensure that as new devices are introduced people with disabilities are not left behind.
Have Perez and Justices other geniuses noticed that blind people cannot read regular books either? Perhaps fairness should require universities to close their libraries lest sighted students enjoy a serious advantage over their blind colleagues.
For that matter is it equitable that sighted students can see their professors while blind scholars only can hear them? Perhaps DOJ should sue every university until they force teachers to lecture behind dark curtains. That way professors could be heard but not seen equally by all students.
Meanwhile blind people now can activate Kindles newest model to read books aloud.
Crisis averted.
As for condescension consider President Obamas August 5 speech at a Chicago Ford plant. Obama praised federal bailouts for the auto industry including a new $250 million Export-Import Bank loan guarantee for Ford.
I refuse to walk away from this industry and American jobs Obama thundered. I have put my money on the American worker.
My money? Really? Does Obama think we are that stupid?
Obamas middle initials should be O.P.M. as in Other Peoples Money. He spends trillions relentlessly. And none of it is his money.
Washington is costly too. Obama loves federal assistance for alternative energy projects. Supposedly they create jobs. The August 9 Newsweek compared the taxpayer costs against the employment benefits of several such initiatives. U.S. Geothermal received a $102.2 million loan guarantee for a project that employed 10 people. Cost per job: $10.2 million. Brightsource Energys $1.37 billion guarantee funded a program that yielded 86 positions at $15.9 million apiece. Abengoa Solars $1.45 billion guarantee produced 85 jobs at $17 million each.
Well at least the feds who perpetrate this nonsense work cheaply.
Yeah right.
As the Bureau of Economic Analysis recently concluded in 2009 average private-sector compensation (salary and benefits) was $61051. Among federal civilians however the equivalent figure was $123049 - slightly more than double. Since 2000 inflation-adjusted private-sector pay has grown 8.8 percent. Among federal civilians compensation is up 36.9 percent - more than quadruple the private-sector growth rate.
Watching Democrats champion tax increases amid such staggering federal greed is obscene bordering on pornographic.
If federal employees were spending the Great Recession tightening their belts skipping meals and wearing their old shoes thin while walking to job interviews most Americans would think Well we and the feds are all in this together.
Instead this differential in private versus federal compensation look less like all for one and one for all and more like the contrasting scenes inside and outside the gates of Versailles in April 1789.
Not surprisingly in a Rasmussen survey released Wednesday 28 percent of likely voters surveyed believe the US is on the right track while 67 percent think this republic is on the wrong track. Also 65 percent are at least somewhat angry while 40 percent are very angry.
Come November Americans should take this justified fury and fire it like catapults at the Washington Democrats who demolish this beautiful country just a little more each day they go to work.
Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
NEW YORK - Why are Americans enraged? As this moribund economy limps through the third year of doldrums Americans are sick of having their hard-earned money swiped by Washington D.C.s Democrat-dominated political class which is clueless condescending and invariably costly.
Could anything but cluelessness explain what happened when Harvs Metro Car Wash in Sacramento owed the federal government precisely four pennies due to a mistaken tax return? Rather than shrug at a four-cent error the IRS dispatched two agents to deliver a letter by hand informing the owner of his tax debt.
They were deadly serious very aggressive Harvs proprietor Aaron Zeff told the Sacramento Bee. That was the first time he heard that his account was amiss. Indeed Zeff received an official letter last October saying that his business had filed all required returns and addressed any balances due.
Even more clueless if that is possible is the Obama Administrations War on Kindles. As the Washington Examiners Byron York reported several universities collaborated with Amazon to offer Kindles to students in a purely voluntary program to see if the electronic devices were a worthy alternative to traditional tree-killing textbooks.
Unfair! screamed the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division. It investigated Arizona State Case Western and other universities for possible discrimination against the blind. After all division chief Tom Perez told a House hearing We must remain vigilant to ensure that as new devices are introduced people with disabilities are not left behind.
Have Perez and Justices other geniuses noticed that blind people cannot read regular books either? Perhaps fairness should require universities to close their libraries lest sighted students enjoy a serious advantage over their blind colleagues.
For that matter is it equitable that sighted students can see their professors while blind scholars only can hear them? Perhaps DOJ should sue every university until they force teachers to lecture behind dark curtains. That way professors could be heard but not seen equally by all students.
Meanwhile blind people now can activate Kindles newest model to read books aloud.
Crisis averted.
As for condescension consider President Obamas August 5 speech at a Chicago Ford plant. Obama praised federal bailouts for the auto industry including a new $250 million Export-Import Bank loan guarantee for Ford.
I refuse to walk away from this industry and American jobs Obama thundered. I have put my money on the American worker.
My money? Really? Does Obama think we are that stupid?
Obamas middle initials should be O.P.M. as in Other Peoples Money. He spends trillions relentlessly. And none of it is his money.
Washington is costly too. Obama loves federal assistance for alternative energy projects. Supposedly they create jobs. The August 9 Newsweek compared the taxpayer costs against the employment benefits of several such initiatives. U.S. Geothermal received a $102.2 million loan guarantee for a project that employed 10 people. Cost per job: $10.2 million. Brightsource Energys $1.37 billion guarantee funded a program that yielded 86 positions at $15.9 million apiece. Abengoa Solars $1.45 billion guarantee produced 85 jobs at $17 million each.
Well at least the feds who perpetrate this nonsense work cheaply.
Yeah right.
As the Bureau of Economic Analysis recently concluded in 2009 average private-sector compensation (salary and benefits) was $61051. Among federal civilians however the equivalent figure was $123049 - slightly more than double. Since 2000 inflation-adjusted private-sector pay has grown 8.8 percent. Among federal civilians compensation is up 36.9 percent - more than quadruple the private-sector growth rate.
Watching Democrats champion tax increases amid such staggering federal greed is obscene bordering on pornographic.
If federal employees were spending the Great Recession tightening their belts skipping meals and wearing their old shoes thin while walking to job interviews most Americans would think Well we and the feds are all in this together.
Instead this differential in private versus federal compensation look less like all for one and one for all and more like the contrasting scenes inside and outside the gates of Versailles in April 1789.
Not surprisingly in a Rasmussen survey released Wednesday 28 percent of likely voters surveyed believe the US is on the right track while 67 percent think this republic is on the wrong track. Also 65 percent are at least somewhat angry while 40 percent are very angry.
Come November Americans should take this justified fury and fire it like catapults at the Washington Democrats who demolish this beautiful country just a little more each day they go to work.
Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
