Political Place: June 14, 2012

Note: The views expressed in these political submissions do not reflect those of the Sun Day, its staff, or those associated to the Sun Day.

Teen liberty team to meet at Rec Center

If we live above our means today, we will be forced to live below our means tomorrow.

Make no mistake about it; we’re facing real danger as a result of our nation’s spiraling debt and ongoing annual spending deficits. We must all wake up to the generational debt that is taking place, and recognize that it’s our kids who are going to pay for it.

SOS Liberty is a growing, national student-led group of high school and university students who are concerned about their generation’s future. Each high school student today is inheriting an average debt of $870,000. SOS Liberty believes that older generations are essentially “stealing our future,” and they’re not too happy about it. As teenagers, their mission is to educate all of our fellow Americans about the dangers of this debt now taking place and mobilize both older and younger generations to support sound fiscal policies before it’s too late.

On June 19, members of the SOS Liberty team will be at the Huntley Park District Rec Center 12015 Mill Street – Willow Room to talk about our national debt, deficits, and what you can do to make change happen. Gather in at 6:30 p.m. and speaker to begin at 7 p.m. This event is sponsored by the Huntley Tea Party.

Attention parents and grandparents! Bring your children and their teenage kids to hear what this younger generation thinks about their inherited debt and what we all can do about it. The time to do this is now!

For more information on SOS Liberty and teen leadership, go to www.sosliberty.com

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Huntley Seniors For Progressive Action June meeting

Huntley Seniors for Progressive Action reminds Sun City residents to attend HSPA’s June General Meeting on June 14.

At the General Meeting, HSPA will continue to plan how to support local candidates for Congress with special input from the Dennis Anderson campaign. HSPA will help you learn how to help candidates so that seniors will be represented in Congress by those who support protection of Social Security, Medicare/Healthcare, as well as education, women’s rights, and preservation of the middle class.

Come to the Huntley Park District Rec Center Multi-Purpose [Willow] Room at 6 p.m. on Thursday June 14.

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Congressional candidate Dennis Anderson responds to positions of Congressman Randy Hultgren

Huntley Seniors for Progressive Action assembled several prominent positions held by 14th District Congressman Randy Hultgren and shown on his website. They then asked 14th District Democratic Candidate Dennis Anderson his responses to the same positions. Below is the summary of those positions and responses.

Representative Hultgren’s statements are provided essentially as shown without any documentation or reference to sources on his website. Consider:

Hultgren’s positions:

1. The rise of unemployment is a direct result of the Obama administration’s out-of-control spending, massive deficits, and strident anti-business agenda. While Randy does not believe that government creates jobs, he knows that it can destroy jobs through uncertainty, out-of-control spending, high taxes, and burdensome regulations.

Anderson’s response:

The unemployment rate began to climb steeply during President George W. Bush’s last year in office, from 5 percent at the start of that year to 7.8 percent – a more than 50 percent increase – when President Obama took office, at which point the economy was shedding some 700,000 jobs per month. That steep climb continued for the next year, but has been on a generally downward trend since early 2010. I refer Mr. Hultgren to a simple chart from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics that can be found at:

data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet?request_action=wh&graph_name=LN_cpsbref3

A recent report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the employment situation has been improving across virtually all sectors since the downward slide was arrested in 2010. The report, “Current Employment Statistics, Highlights, April 2012,” can be found at www.bls.gov/ces/highlights012012.pdf

It is important to note as well that if public sector job cuts championed by Republicans in Congress and in Governorships and legislatures around the country had not been imposed, the unemployment rate would now be in the neighborhood of 7 percent.

Republicans like Representative Hultgren conveniently forget – and are outraged when anyone reminds them – that the deficit was created during the previous administration and was largely the result of two unfunded wars and simultaneous tax cuts.

Federal spending under President Obama has been lower than under the previous administration. In fact, it is the lowest that it has been in decades, as reported in an article in the Wall Street Journal’s “Marketwatch.” This article can be found at www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22?link=home_carousel

The Republican bromides of business being stifled by regulations, taxes, and uncertainty are just not borne out in surveys of small business owners. What is holding back small businesses is quite simply, a lack of customers, as revealed in a number of surveys. As for “uncertainty,” none other than Arthur Laffer himself, conservative creator of the Laffer Curve and exponent of “trickle down” economics, has stated that uncertainty is always a condition of business ownership and is an issue that good business owners deal with on a daily basis.

2. Fix the broken tax code

It is clear that the system is broken. We should clean up our tax code by making it flatter, fairer, and remove loopholes to create an environment where businesses can thrive and focus on growing and creating jobs.

Anderson’s response:

Flatter taxes and fairer taxes are not the same. Understanding this is not difficult, and I am constantly surprised at the number of people who seem to have trouble grasping the concept.

For example, if the amount needed by a family to obtain decent housing, sufficient food, clothing, adequate health care, and transportation to and from school and work in a given area is $2,500 per month, a family earning $2,700 per month before taxes would take home only $2,457 per month if the tax rate was, for example, the 9 percent suggested by Herman Cain. That family would be pushed into dependency.

A family earning $10,000 per month would still be taking home $9,100 per month at the same 9 percent tax rate and would obviously be much advantaged by the low rate. The progressive income tax rate has never been meant to equalize everyone’s standard of living, as some conservatives would have you believe, but yes, there is a redistributive effect that helps to ensure that even lower income earners have the opportunity to live decent lives.

As to loopholes, one person’s loophole is another’s critical incentive. I would agree with Representative Hultgren that a tax code that allows massively profitable industries to pay no taxes or, worse yet, to get refunds is in need of reform.

Jobs are created primarily by small businesses. Small business owners, as noted above, do not view regulations or taxes as a major obstacle to their growth and success.

3. Stop Job-Crushing Regulations

Randy supports legislation to require congressional review and approval of any proposed government regulation that would increase the cost of doing business in America.

Anderson’s response:

“Increase the cost of doing business in America?” By how much? This is so vague and meaningless as to be discounted without comment. Nearly.

Congress bears the responsibility for passing laws. The Executive Branch is charged with implementing those laws. Requiring Congressional approval of regulations established by the Executive in fulfillment of its constitutional responsibilities is an idea that those who claim to treasure the constitution must find particularly distasteful. Or perhaps not.

4. 100 percent pro-life record

Randy has been a constant opponent of abortion. He believes that it is our moral obligation to respect all life from the moment it begins. In Washington, Randy is fighting to remove the shroud of secrecy from the abortion industry and supports eliminating all taxpayer funding for entities that choose to perform abortions.

Anderson’s response:

The legality of abortion was decided in 1973. Taxpayer funding of abortion services is already prohibited. The argument that providing federal funds to organizations may free up other funds for support of abortion services – i.e. the “fungibility” argument – might be applied equally to religious organizations, for example, that receive federal funds but then use not those funds, but other, non-federal dollars, for religious evangelism and political action. Would not the fungibility argument apply equally to these other organizations?

(More positions and responses to follow in the next edition of the Sun Day)

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In defense of points on Obama, healthcare

In their May 17 post the Seniors for Progressive Action wrote the following:

“One letter writer attempted to discredit Fact-Check.org‘s characterization of these claims as false (Referring to rationing in the Affordable Care Act) by contending that the Annenberg Foundation, which funds the site, is connected with President Obama and Bill Ayers.”

My mentioning of the Annenberg Foundation was to indicate that Annenburg knows Mr. Ayers and his ideology intimately, which is true enough, but I never said that their claim about rationing was false. Consider the following: On December 17, 1993, Ayers, Ann Hallet, and Warren Chapman met to discuss how to win an Annenberg Challenge grant for Chicago. Hallett and Chapman were already informal pro bono advisors to the national Annenberg Challenge, and over the course of the following year they met repeatedly at Brown University with other Annenberg advisors and worked to ensure that Chicago would be one of the first cities selected to receive a grant. (49 million dollars was finally awarded) (a)

As to President Obama, his only connection is that he was the founding co-chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge along with Bill Ayers. Is he connected to Annenberg? Your guess is as good as mine.

The following is what I actually wrote in regards to Fact- Check’s declaring rationing allegations false.

“In all honesty however, Fact Check merely pointed to the actual phrasing in the (Independent Payment Advisory Board) outline.”

As people read progressive posts, they have to be on guard for their inability to convey the subject matter they have read to third parties. But most of all, take into account that possibly it is intentional to avoid discussion of the actual subject matter. Leftists despise evidence. If it works in their heads, surely it’ll work in reality; if it ends up not working, the excuse will be that, as with Keynesian economics, it wasn’t really tried.

(a) Wikipedia
Ted Stockwell
N17

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