Barack Obama and the Fair Tax an Intriguing Opportunity

Supporters of the Fair Tax, that is a national sales tax which would replace our nation’s idiotic income tax structure have an interesting opportunity in Barack Obama. The presumptive Democratic nominee for president hasn’t come out in favor of the Fair Tax but he hasn’t come out against it either.
Obama is clearly hedging his bets on the Fair Tax issue, the official Fair Tax website (www.fairtax.org) reports that John McCain has come out squarely against the Fair Tax. McCain has said that he would vote against the Fair Tax or a similar scheme. Obama has said the Fair Tax needs more study which is political speak for “it’s probably a good idea.” Obama’s position is intriguing indeed for it opens up the possibility of real reform on one of the most serious issues facing America today our tax system isn’t working.
Average people face a rising tax load while the government can’t find enough money to pay its bills even though the economy is booming. Meanwhile the rich who have lots of tax breaks laugh all the way to the bank and pay fewer taxes. Now any economist worth his salt will tell you that a national sales tax would raise enough money to pay off the national debt and pay for all the stuff we want our government to do. Virtually every other industrialized country on Earth has a national sales tax, the European nations and Canada which liberals worship have high national sales taxes.
Yet nobody in Washington is talking about such a tax because it would away Congress’s ability to create tax loopholes. This puts money in lobbyists and politicians bank accounts so it’s a sacred cow they can’t touch.
President Obama would be in a unique position to champion the Fair Tax or something similar. The presidency is the bully pulpit, the President can champion causes no other politician can yet even Presidents have limits. No Republican would be able to promote a National Sales tax because they would be vulnerable to media claims that such a tax would hurt the poor and the working class even though such claims are pure bull shit. Hence John McCain’s almost pathological opposition to such a measure, he is a rich Republican who lives in a country club so he can’t oppose the Fair Tax no matter how good that would be for the country and those that work for a living (a class of individuals that includes neither John McCain or Barack Obama which is part of our country’s present crisis).
President Obama, former community activist and card carrying liberal Democrat would face no such criticism if he came out in favor of the Fair Tax. Indeed he could point out why the Fair Tax is a good fundamentality liberal idea and sign it. Democratic Congressmen with their pockets stuffed full of tax lawyers money and media shills would be in no position to attack him.
But would President Obama make such a bold move? Well if President Obama’s poll numbers were falling and he faced a hostile Congress it would be possible. It’s happened before.
Remember Bill Clinton and Welfare Reform by the early 1990s it was obvious that Lyndon Johnson’s welfare system was a dismal failure. Lots of well documented research proved that federal welfare was actually keeping people in poverty and making social problems worse. Average working Americans were sick of welfare recipients laying around watching TV while their incomes shrank. Yet no Republican could sign off on welfare reform out of being seen as mean to the poor, even though welfare was hurting the poor. Enter Bill Clinton, having tried to govern as a traditional big government Democrat and failing miserably. Bill Clinton eagerly signed off on welfare reform and got reelected by a wide margin.
My guess is that Obama will pull a Clinton with tax reform, some time in 2009 or 2010 when his polls are falling and it looks like Jeb Bush is coming on strong in the polls, he’ll drag the big idea out of the closet. The big idea will be the national sales tax, imagine the public reaction if the president goes on TV on April 14 and says folks next year you won’t have to pay income tax or worry about a tax return if Congress votes for my new tax bill.
Of course President Obama’s position on the Fair Tax will be probably be a mute point because I seriously doubt Congress would pass such a sensible measure. Congressmen and Senators simply don’t want to take the money the income tax brings them out of their pockets. Congress will only go along with such a radical reform if their backs are against the wall, as they were in 1933 when the nation was facing the Great Depression. If the present economic crisis gets that bad we may see the Fair Tax.

Barack Obama and Grover Cleveland?

Over the past year or so we Americans have been subjected to a lot of hogwash about Barrack Obama being the new Abraham Lincoln.
This comparison of course is little more than media hype but Barrack Obama does resemble a 19th Century American President Grover Cleveland. Today, Cleveland is remembered mainly as the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms, 1885-1889 and 1893-1897, but Cleveland was the dominant political figure of his age, a symbol of change and a very influential and effective president.
The comparisons between Cleveland and Obama are rather interesting, like Obama, Cleveland rose fast in politics from Mayor of Buffalo, New York, in 1881 to Governor of New York State in 1882 to President of the United States in 1884. Like Obama, Cleveland was a reformer, he was elected on a ticket of good government centered on the boring issue of civil service reform and balanced budgets. Like Obama, Cleveland was seen as the symbol of a New Age the first Democrat elected president after the Civil War. Like Obama, Cleveland was perceived as a healer who would bring the country back together again and end its bloody divisions.
The reforms Cleveland ushered in were not so great, indeed they were simple but effective ones. He completed his first predecessor Chester Arthur’s work of building the Civil Service and laid the ground work for the US Navy. Teddy Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet of battleships was largely laid down under Cleveland. Economically Cleveland was a staunch free trader who stood up to all sorts of silly economic ideas like free silver and the tariff.
Cleveland was no radical or bringer of change, he was the symbol of a new dominant class in American life, small town merchants and lawyers. In person Cleveland was a genial type, a lawyer and politician who had gotten elected to office by being friendly. He could hoist a tankard of beer with the local Germans and carouse with the boys. There was little offensive or frightening about him, he was the President late 19th Century America wanted, a friendly small town shopkeeper in the White House.
Like Cleveland there is little threatening about Obama, he is beyond his skin color quite boring. He’s a family man who worked at a variety of jobs, he’s married, never done anything radical and the worst his critics can find out about him is that he attended a church where the pastor gave some radical sermons. There is no evidence that either Barrack Obama or his pastor Reverend Wright ever took action about those ideas. Reverend Wright spent the sixties serving as a US Marine in Vietnam and tending to President Lyndon Johnston as part of a special military detail. Barrack Obama’s radical background consisted of community work.
That is another parallel with Cleveland, Americans in the 1880s were fed up with radical politics and radical change they simply wanted to relax and enjoy the prosperity new technology was bringing them. Americans today are fed up with radical politics whether it be George W. Bush’s warmongering, the Hate America crowd on the left or the Bible thumpers. They want a government and a president that won’t rock the boat and that’s exactly what Barrack Obama promises. Look at his foreign policy, get out of Iraq, start no more wars and engage in diplomacy nothing radical there.
So who does Obama represent? He represents the new American middle or upper class that of educated largely white middle class people who live a comfortable existence but are nervous about the future. Those David Brooks would call Bobos, the software engineers, lawyers, financial analysts and others who’ve achieved the American dream. The people who live in Barrack’s Chicago neighborhood of Observatory Park. Just as Grover Cleveland represented the shop owners and lawyers on Main Street who were fed up with both the robber barons and the radical labor unions of late 19th Century America. Cleveland used the army to crush a number of strikes. Barrack represents the software engineers who are fed up with Rush Limbaugh, Noam Chomsky, Newt Gingrich, Jesse Jackson, Paris Hilton and Ken Lay.
What will President Obama be like? A lot like President Cleveland, his administration will be one of restraint, limited government, measured reform (probably national healthcare and railroad building) and a dedication to keeping things quiet. Just the way the folks back in Observatory Park like them.

Super Hero Movies: the Ten Best

As a life long comic geek and movie buff I feel uniquely qualified to pontificate on the best super hero movies. Note super hero movies are a rather recent phenomenon because technology simply kept the movie makers from cranking out big budget variations on our favorite crime fighters that lived up to the vision of the comic books until recent years. So what are the ten best? Here’s my list simply based on the ones I’ve seen.
1) The Incredibles No movie has done a better job of capturing the spirit of modern comic books than this animated classic. Pixar’s tale of a family of super heroes forced underground by prejudice, fear and envy is both an action movie and a modern fable. It’s visually stunning but it’s also poignant, touching, thought provoking, funny, thrilling, visually stunning and thoroughly entertaining. Both a great action adventure tale and an intelligent commentary on modern life as well as a great fable about the evils of prejudice. This film works because it doesn’t insult our intelligence it treats super heroes as people and that’s why it works. No the Incredibles aren’t part of any comic book universe, they are Disney properties and will undoubtedly suffer for it but they remain true to their roots unlike most movie super heroes. The comic book influences behind this film are endless the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Captain America and Allen Moore’s Watchmen to name but a few. One hopes that Pixar or one of the big animation houses will produce a real super hero movie.
2) Iron Man (Okay Disclaimer here Iron Man is my all time favorite super hero) This high tech thrill ride worked because A) it didn’t insult our intelligence B) remained true to the original material and C) it was a really good movie with great direction and great acting. More importantly for the first time we were given a super hero who actually looked and moved like something out of the comic books. Also for the first time the comic book back story was taken seriously and intelligently. Finally Robert Downy Junior gave what was simply a brilliant performance as he always does. Terrence Howard was great as Tony Stark’s only real friend Jordy Rhodes so I look forward to the next one as well as the War Machine spin off franchise. Even Jeff Bridges was great as a Hippy turned corporate raider.
3) Hell Boy This funky little story about a demon put to work by the government as America’s first line of defense against supernatural evil was a great story. It was great because it was unpretentious it concentrated on telling the story and entertaining not preaching to us. The best thing we could say about this film, it wanted to make us read the original comic book. We go to most comic book movies because we read the comic book, loved it, and hope in our hearts they can replicate it. Then settle for a story and visuals that are worse than the worst issue of the comic book. Hell Boy made me want to read a comic book I had never heard of that was something.
4) Batman: the Mask of The Phantasm The Dark Knight has had several cinematic outings dating back to World War II movie serials but this is by the far the best. A poignant love story about Bruce Wayne before he donned the mask is intertwined with Batman’s later day hunt for a murderous vigilante and a showdown with the Joker. All I can say this is the only time the real Batman has been captured on film and Paul Dini is a genius, Nuff said.
5) Superman: the Movie/Superman: II If anything introduced superheroes and their epic nature to the public it was these movies. Intended as one film but made as two this epic broke a lot of ground. It was great in many ways, Christopher Reeve’s Superman paragon of old fashioned goodness what a hero should be, Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor was a brilliant over the top villain and Terrance Stamp was genuinely scary as General Zod. A good old fashioned super villain out for world conquest and nothing more his ruthlessness was frightening (a lesson modern movie makers should study). The films worked they were later cheapened by crappy sequels but that’s Hollywood. Superman Returns well that’s one of those crappy sequels.
6) Spiderman I, II and III If some film school professor were to hold a course on how not to do a superhero movie. He or she should show these three films they are good movies and they capture a great deal of the spirit of the comic books and betray it. They also suffer from Hollywood pretension worse there is no sense of place and lousy storytelling. Director Sam Rammi thinks great acting and cool looking special effects can compensate for lack of a good story and basic storytelling they can’t. Sam gets some Spiderman facts right but screws everything else up. Particularly bothersome is the habit of making every bad guy sympathetic what’s wrong with the plain old fashioned notion of this thug is robbing and stealing he’s bad. What’s wrong with the basic plot of superhero vs. villain showdown? Why does every bad guy have to be sympathetic? Hint Sam they’re the bad guys they’re out to rob and kill. It looks great it hits a few emotional buttons but it doesn’t work.
7) Batman(1989) The film that started the modern super hero explosion, Tim Burton’s flawed masterpiece. He captured some of the spirit of the comic books and showed us that super heroes could be adult entertainment. He also gave us something so bizarre we couldn’t relate to it. The lack of realism made it accessible but took away the emotional anchors. The film was saved well by Jack Nicholson’s over the top performance as the Joker that worked, little else did. Michael Keaton’s Batman performance gave us a glimpse of that actor’s future career (where in the hell is he today?).
8) Batman: Begins If there is a good basic superhero movie this is it, the essentials are there be true to the source but make a good movie. Have good acting and good writing and don’t be too ambitious in your first outing. Rewrite the basic story a little but only in a way to annoy comic book fans (where the fuck is Talia? How can you have Raif Al Ghoul without her?). Also good acting, and a good basic story. Michael Cain is as always wonderful and so is Morgan Freeman. This film proves an old Hollywood maxim, good casting usually overcomes a lousy script and a weak story.
9) X-men The first and as far as I know only serious attempt at a super hero team movie. A dark grim story of a bunch of super powered freaks fighting for survival it worked because of good acting and little else. Ian McKellan as Magneto Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier. Their talent trumps the corn and pretension. The next two movies well see entries 20 and 30 on this list.
10) Batman (1966) The first attempt at a big budget movie to cash in on the super hero fad basically a two hour episode of the 1960s TV show but it worked. Adam West’s corn ball performance as Batman, Veteran actors Caesar Romero, Burgess Meredith and Frank Gersham as Joker, Penguin and Riddler. Lots of color, lots of gags, very entertaining and nothing pretentious. It works because it was made at a time when comic book super heroes were simply a staple of pop culture to be exploited and not icons to be worshiped.

Hugo Chavez: Juan Peron for the 21st Century

Peter Hitchens is wrong to compare Hugo Chavez to Fidel Castro, for Chavez doesn’t resemble Castro at all. Instead Hugo Chavez resembles another Latin American leader of the 20th Century, Juan Peron the Argentine dictator of the 40s and 50s who made a pathetic comeback in the early 1970s.
Like Peron, Chavez is a professional soldier turned radical politician, like Peron Chavez is a soldier who has fought no battles, killed no enemies and never seen enemy gunfire. Instead his military career is based upon his ability to impress his fellow officers in the mess. Like many Latin American soldiers who found army pay too low Chavez set his sights on the greener pastures of politics.
Like Peron, Chavez tells his audience what they want to hear that their troubles are caused by the evil CIA and the Jewish capitalists from New York. Like Peron he cooks up questionable social programs and share the wealth schemes that will put a lot of money in the pockets of his political supporters. Since former private Fidel Castro of the Red Army is a popular figure among the Latin American poor and the editorial staff at the New York Times Chavez fawns over him. Whether Chavez actually gives a damn about Fidel is anybody’s guess, Fidel is popular so Comrade Hugo likes him, much as Juan Peron liked Mussolini and Hitler (who were far more popular among average Latins than Stalin in the 1940s note you won’t hear this from Che loving Americanleftists but it’s true) until the threat of US Marines marching on the presidential palace changed his mind. Juan wisely seeing that Stalin had no navy and possibility of reaching him, remained anti Communist and Anti American.
In the year 2008, spouting the Communist line is little more than rhetoric, this isn’t 1978 when such a stance would have quickly invited the presence of the Red Army. Comrade Hugo knows all such rhetoric will get him these days is a little support in the shanty towns and a good write up in the Manchester Guardian. So Comrade Hugo plays the good Communist, all the better to steal the oil proceeds with.
So what should America do about Hugo Chavez, the best course would be simply to ignore him. The man is a fool and sooner or later even the Reddest Venezuelan radical will be sick of him and be glad to see him on the plane to Havana. Especially when proves an embarrassment to their cause. My guess the left will drop friend Hugo when the inevitable articles about the billions of dollars in oil money that Comrade Chavez has been quietly stashing in overseas banks while attacking Capitalist greed appear in the world’s media. When that happens Hugo Chavez will be like Juan Peron a very bad joke.
Of course there is a very dark side to Hugo Chavez and ilk. Americans remember the comic opera Juan Peron and his first wife Evita put on in the early 1950s. They don’t remember Juan’s second coming in the 1970s, in that era Peron fearing leftist students ordered the army to murder them it did. The slaughter went on for ten years culminating in the Falklands War in which untrained Argentine draftees were marched into battle against the highly trained soldiers of the British Army, the Argentines lost but their society had been soaked in blood.
My guess is that Hugo Chavez’s debacle will end when he is either murdered or driven out by some sort of military coup. Chavez’s policies are eerily similar to another South American demagogue, Salvatore Allende the self styled Marxist president of Chile who was murdered by his own army in a bloody coup on September 11, 1973. Alende was murdered because Chile’s middle class feared his socialist excesses and his flirtation with the Eastern Bloc (East German and Cuban advisors were already in Chile the Red Army wasn’t far behind). Eventually the Chilean Army led by Augusto Pinochet (an officer who had no noticeable politics before Allende’s excesses) overthrew and murdered Alende and launched a wave of terror worthy of the Communists. Untold thousands were dragged away and shot because of politics. Pinochet stuck around for years and launched capitalist reforms that laid the ground work for a stable Chilean democracy. Pinochet succeeded largely because he had tacit American support, the US had no desire to see the Red Army on the South American continent which was the logical result of Allende’s policies.
Now political conditions in the US today would prevent any sort of US support for a Pinochet style coup in Venezuelan even though that would be fairly easy to organize and carry out. Vast numbers of average Venezuelans would quietly turn their backs and keep their mouths shut if somebody would put a bullet in their leader’s brain and declare himself presidente. No modern CIA officer would give plotters against Chavez any sort of aid out of fear of a 60 Minutes expose. No US president today would do as Richard Nixon did and sign off on an anti Chavez coup out of fear of the New York Times Editorial Page.
Does this mean we are stuck with Chavez? No, the Venezuelans who are fed up with Chavez and want to get rid of him will sooner or later go over to the Chinese embassy, there they’ll find the support they need for their coup. The Chinese officials sick and tired of the buffoon shaking them down for bribe money while quoting Noam Chomsky will gladly give the locals all the money and support they need. If they need expertise at staging a coup I’m sure there are plenty of ex CIA operatives now working as consultants who would gladly sign onto the enterprise. So my guess is we’ll see the spectacle of Hugo Chavez killed or driven out by a junta of conservative Venezuelan soldiers and businessmen backed by the Chinese Communist Party.
On that day American power and influence in Latin America will be dead and Hugo Chavez will get what he deserves. Indeed his first move will probably be to run to Washington and scream for American aid to fight the Chinese menace, hopefully nobody will listen to the fool. Unfortunately the American conservatives who today attack Uncle Hugo will probably embrace him as a patriot and demand American tax dollars to support his cause. Hopefully they’ll see through Hugo as what he is a bad joke like his mentor Juan Peron, unfortunately our political elite probably won’t see that until they’ve been burned by him.