Britain - Tax, Tax, Tax, Tax....

So far, the Coalition government in Britain has been an enormous failure when it has come to issues of taxation.  After a promising start where the income tax threshold was raised from £7,500 to £10,000, it was then announced that in order to "make up" for the loss in taxes, the middle class and the rich would predictably get soaked some more in order to compensate for it.  They then raised the already high VAT (or sales tax) from 17.5% to 20%.

While this wouldn't be a disaster in a normal country, in socialist Britain where everywhere one turns there is another large tax waiting for you, it is yet more theft from those who work hard to provide for themselves and for their families, and who have dared to have the audacity to be successful.  Iain Martin has written an incredible article on this, and I fully recommend that anyone interested in this subject takes the time to read this article, as it sums up brilliantly the current state of taxation in Britain and the Coalition's decision to make it worse.

In addition to a now 20% sales tax in Britain, from this year those earning over £35,000 (approximately $50,000) will be hit with a 40% income tax.  Even when one considers the raising of the threshold, this is still an unbearable tax burden.  Add into this things such as the high corporation tax that affects those working in business, inheritance taxes, National Insurance taxes and enormously high fuel prices, and the result is a Britain that is not an easy place in which to work or do business.

We have known this for a while, but for the predominantly conservative Coalition to be making this worse and not better, is a real scandal.  It needs Brits to begin putting pressure on their government to ease the tax burden, just like Americans have been doing through organisations such as the Tea Party, as it seems like all of our political parties have one thing in common - they want to tax us more!

The New Christine O'Donnell Ad - Perfection!

A number of people have drawn attention to the latest Christine O'Donnell ad, and I thought I'd throw out my thoughts on the issue.

If you are one of the British readers on this blog, you might not know who Christine O'Donnell is.  Basically, she is the Republican Party Senate candidate for Delaware in the upcoming November elections.  By nominating the very conservative O'Donnell in the primaries (backed as the Tea Party candidate), the Republican voters overthrew so-called 'moderate' Republican Mike Castle in the biggest upset of the primary season.  Castle was seen as a dead cert to win if he had received the nomination, and because she is so conservative, O'Donnell is perceived to be less likely to win in what is a relatively liberal state, but if she wins, she is going to make more of a difference than a Mike Castle ever would.  With the Senate race being so tight, O'Donnell's defeat or victory may make or break the Republican chances of winning a majority in the Senate this November.  It has therefore received huge amounts of media coverage, mostly negative from left-wing sources trying to perform a hatchet job.

Since her nomination, O'Donnell has been subject to some outrageous smears.  The typical ones are obvious - she is an "extreme" right-wing nutjob (cut spending??  How dare she?), she is stupid, an idiot, etc etc.  Her enemies have also focused on a few videos of her in her younger days when she talks about her Christian faith - she mentions in one that she thinks masturbation is a sin, and in another one she talks about how when much younger she had flirted with witchcraft, before she converted to Christianity.  As a result she is being labelled a sexually repressed witch!  The witch smear seems especially amusing as they are trying to say that she is both a witch and a right-wing Christian!  Note to the left: She can't be both!

I don't know a great deal about her personality, but whenever I have seen her she always seems like a very pleasant young woman who is genuinely in the race to make a difference, not to be a careerist, and someone who will stick to her principles - exactly the sort of person we need in Washington.  With all the attempts to brand her an extremist nutjob with weird beliefs, her policies are simple - cutting spending and taxes are the big two, but also a focus on cutting out corruption, and a strong stance on illegal immigration.

So now we come to her latest video




Some people have claimed that acknowledging the "witch" accusation gives the accusation credence, and that the ad is too simple, but I think it is brilliant, and I confidently predict a surge in the polls over the next few weeks.

Why?  First, because just by showing O'Donnell's face (albeit with some slightly goofy music), it instantly makes it seem unlikely that she is some sort of lunatic frothing at the mouth - she is obviously just a normal woman seeking political office and trying to do a good thing.  But also it summarises perfectly what has gone wrong with politics in recent years, and that is that many voters don't feel like politicians are "us".  They are careerists, or people with weird beliefs, or corrupt criminals.  But they are "other people", not us.

The popularity of the Tea Party movement comes from the fact that it is just normal people calling for what normal people want.  Most normal people want to keep most of what they earn, they don't want the country spent into trillions of debt, they don't want to bend over backwards to politically correct groups, they don't believe that children should have pornographic sex ed lessons forced on them, they don't believe in apologising and grovelling to our international enemies, and they don't want illegal immigration rewarded with citizenship - and they want that reflected in their political candidates.

So when O'Donnell says "I'm you", she is perfectly tapping into that concern which could be said to be the central theme of this election.  As a result, she doesn't need to say exactly what it is she will do, because she says that she will do what we would do - and we know what we would do!

In conclusion, despite many in the Republican camp getting nervous about this candidate, I am not saying she will definitely win, but I do think that she will make a damn good fight of it!  She overcame the odds once, she can do it again!

Obama has a Tantrum - Part XII

For all the chatter about how angry and hateful the Tea Party are supposed to be, we are seeing the anger amongst Democrat politicians rise and rise as November elections approach, and popularity plummets.  Today we have seen a fresh outburst by none other than the President.

I have always said that the President is an angry man.  Read Dreams of My Father, and you will see a great deal of anger about America come through, and this has been seen various times throughout his Presidency.  His political ideology comes not from love, or a passion for something good - instead coming from a hatred towards certain people, groups and countries (including the UK.)  It is mostly concealed, but comes out occasionally, especially when he goes off-message.

According to reports, he gave an interview for Rolling Stone magazine, where he by and large stayed on message.  He finished the interview, left and then burst into the interview room again, sat back down, and proceeded to rant about Democrat supporters who were unenthusiastic about November and who might not vote in the upcoming November elections.

He proceeded to blast his own supporters as "inexcusable" and "irresponsible", telling them to "buck up" and vote for him - failing to account for the fact that they might not want to vote for him.  Such a rant shows not only that the pressure has got to Obama, but also that he fails to understand just why he is so unpopular.

The reason people who voted him in 2008 are now unenthusiastic isn't because they are lazy, or stupid, or bored.  It is because they didn't get what they voted for!  He claims that they should stop bitching as he got 70% of his agenda through so far.  But that is precisely the point - people didn't vote for his agenda, they don't want it!  The reason they don't want to vote for him is because he got 70% of his hidden agenda through.

In the 2008 election, voters were fed a great deal of fluff about "hope" and "change", and how with Obama there would be no more red state and blue state, how he would reach across the aisle, and basically how he was the perfect moderate.  Stir in with that a widespread dislike of Bush, a fawning media, and the race card being played as often as it could be laid upon the table, and that is really the short story of how Obama was elected without ever really revealing  his hard-left tendencies.

However, in his arrogance, Obama seems to have thought that he persuaded America to turn into a socialist nation, and that because he has managed to proceed with 70% of a socialist agenda, Americans should somehow be grateful and turn out to vote for him again in their droves.  In his arrogance, I don't think that it has crossed his mind that people don't want it all.  They don't want Obamacare, they don't want a weak foreign policy, they don't want higher taxes, they don't want outrageous spending and they don't want mass nationalisation of industry.

The fact that he doesn't get that, and chooses instead to blame his own supporters for his problems shows just how "incredibly intelligent" the prodigy really is.  However, the fact that he doesn't get it and lives in his own little make believe world is a very positive sign for the Republicans in the November elections.  Because if Obama starts turning on his own supporters, and failing to take responsibility for anything that he has done, then the Democrats are really screwed - both in November, and in 2012.

So in the meantime...more tantrums please Mr President!

November is Coming

With less than 40 days and 40 nights left until the November Elections, we are beginning to see more incredible movie-type trailers for that election.  Here is the latest one from Ben Howe.  It is really good!

Terrorism and the Left

I always find it interesting how, whenever a conservative or libertarian group - like the Tea Party- gets angry and passionate about something, all of a sudden the left get "concerned" and "troubled."  They don't get troubled by the issues raised by that group, and don't deal with any of the complaints that those people may have.  Instead, their "concern" (at least, so they claim) is about the potential for "violence" or "disturbances" that they claim may be encouraged by such movements.  The claim is that if tea partiers or conservatives or whoever are allowed to get too passionate, or become too popular, then it will mean that some nutjob will shoot at the President, or blow up a building or go on a rampage with a gun, or whatever.

And yet time and time again, we never see any violence coming from these groups, and instead see political violence coming time and time again from the left not the right.  Time and time again there are outbreaks of violence, or bomb threats or whatever, instantly assumed to me "some right wing nut", and then they turn out to be a communist or green warrior.

Just a few weeks ago we had the Discovery channel eco-loon who (like the Unabomber) had been inspired by the fringe left-wing environmentalist movement.  Business Insider has some amazing statistics on this  And now in England, the Real IRA are threatening to kill bankers in financial institutions in London, all because such bankers dare to "serve in financing Britain's colonial and capitalist system."

This is the same IRA who, in one form of another, has committed countless acts of terrorism through Great Britain and Ireland.  It is rarely mentioned that their politics are radically left-wing, and they have a great many sympathisers from the international left-wing.  Yet sure enough, here they are, slagging off capitalism and those "evil bankers" who those on the left just love to hate.

Now, I am not trying to say that the anti-banker rhetoric that is constantly spewed from the pages of The Guardian et al has caused this.  Those who commit, or threaten to commit these acts have an agenda and political opinions of their own, and it is folly to believe that if there were a few less editorials on evil bankers then we wouldn't have these problems.

However, it is interesting to imagine if such a group had threatened public sector workers.  Surely this would be blamed immediately on "conservative" rhetoric about spending cuts and how the public sector is strangling Britain?  Just like President Clinton tried to blame Timothy McVeigh's actions on conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, an attack on a trade union or an NHS administrative building would instantly be blamed on "the right", the attackers would be labelled as "right-wing activists" and the narrative would go that they had woken up, read The Daily Mail or listened to a David Cameron speech, and then decided to go out and kill innocent people.

However, in a moment like this, it is worth reflecting on where the real hate speech and violence comes from. In a political climate where the left are trying to blame attacks on Muslims on those who dare to oppose the Ground Zero Mosque and grassroots conservative movements are being labelled "radical", "extreme" and "dangerous", it serves well to highlight stories like this, to show where the real dangerous extremists come from - and it isn't from the right-wing.