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Thursday, June 9, 2005

By Ralf Seiffe

OPINION - Stories over the last several days show an appalling lack of judgment in our public organizations. Even more, it shows that these once trusted organs have broken their bond with the public and are nakedly advocating their preferred policies.

The New York Times ran a front page story about the rich in this country. Readers of this column will probably already know that the country’s wealthy pay the government’s tab--the top half of income earners paying 96% of the government’s costs. As the income of these top earners increases, the proportion of taxes paid grows geometrically--the top one-tenth of one percent pays 16% of all income taxes.

What these figures tell us is that the American income tax system is extremely progressive. This signal feature of 19th century socialism is alive and well in America despite evidence that smart, emerging economies are moving away from accomplishment-killing, marginal income taxes.

What’s intellectually offensive about The New York Times article is that it chooses taxes paid at the terminal point of the Clinton recession as the evidence that the rich don’t pay enough.

Rather than make the point that these able Americans pay much more than their fair share--even after suffering the government’s sponsored deflation--the Times chose to obfuscate the issue.

Not only that, the story feeds class war ammunition to their colleagues in the increasingly lazy fourth estate who check in with the paper each morning for instructions on what to think.

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Amnesty International’s attempt to turn Guantanamo Bay into a festering sore says more about Amnesty’s judgment than it does about the Administration’s.

At one time I thought well of Amnesty International as did many Americans. Formed in 1961 in Britain, the group enjoyed a reputation as defenders of prisoners of conscience, across the globe.

Things have changed. Irene Kahn, the apparently delusional head of the organization has now famously compared the detention camp we run in Cuba to be the equivalent of an old Soviet Gulag. Bill Shultz, the organization’s sergeant in America apparently knows nothing about real Gulags and the real purpose of the camps east of the Volga.

By defending his boss’ misjudgment, Shultz confirms these comments were not designed to apply the Organization’s “universal standard” in defense of prisoners of conscience but to use the terrorists to embarrass the United States and its military. Despite the comparison, it is not the US policy to work these prisoners to death as the Soviet system did. In fact, the Amnesty report was free of examples comparable to those survivors of real gulags have reported.

The real purpose was to undermine the US war effort and Jimmy Carter’s call to close Guantanamo shows Amnesty has captured the 60-watt crowd. From this vantage, Kahn appears to be a standard-issue Euroboob pushing the usual anti-American brief while Shultz’ behavior verges on sedition.

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The Supreme Court also displayed a remarkable distaste for the Constitution last week, reinforcing arguments that the nation’s drug laws are dangerous to our form of government.

Regardless of one’s opinion on the value of medical marijuana, the voters in more than 20% of the states have expressed their sovereignty and made a judgment on the issue. The principle that the people and the states have superior rights when none of the enumerated powers are involved should be much more compelling than any temporal argument against medical dope.

Despite that common sense, the Supremes judged otherwise. Relying on that lynchpin of the New Deal, Wickard v Filburn, the feds have once again stuck their nose into an area that they should avoid. By finding that private production of the regulated substance affects the supply of drugs nationally, the court found that using marijuana for medical purposes is actionable under the drug laws.

One wonders what is not under the purview of a finding of Congress and a friendly court. Perhaps they need to reread Federalist 51.

An under-appreciated outcome of this case and the recently announced mail order wine case is Anton Scalia’s curious decisions to eliminate state’s rights and substantially expand federal powers. Have these decisions disqualified him from elevation when Rehnquist retires?

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Finally, the Congress investigated pensions, particularly the United Airlines situation.

Our own 9th District Democrat Jan Shakowsky filed a brief howling that the defined benefit plan on which United has defaulted is a travesty. Yet, in Ms. Shakowsky’s judgment, the same set-up for Social Security is just fine. In fact, in a babbling appearance on Sunday’s Inside Politics, she told the panel her major recommendation for Social Security Reform is to eliminate any consideration of private accounts.

I bet the United employees wished they had invested in private accounts----just as average Americans will eventually regard Social Security when cuts of their defined benefits begin.

What all four of these judgments have in common is that they suspend common sense in order to preference a political position.

The Times clearly knows that lowering marginal rates creates more revenue for government yet their class war interests trump facts. Amnesty International insists that camps designed to murder Soviet dissidents are the moral equivalent of politely neutralizing terrorists proffering mass murder. The judicial supremacists extend the fig leaf of Wickard and insult 50 million voters who have overruled the Congress. Congressional Democrats and their wooly-headed Republican colleagues refuse to fix Social Security insuring they will have an excuse for a massive and, for them more desirable tax increase sometime in the future.

Public policy based on these judgments compels fears for the Republic. What to do, what to do????

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Ralf Seiffe advises business start-ups and product launches from Chicago, Illinois and is a political analyst and columnist for the Illinois Leader.