posted February 05, 2014 11:33 PM            

"all executive orders do, in fact, bypass Congress in order to implement an agenda"...acoustic

Now, you're agreeing with me again that presidents don't need congressional approval..when they have express constitutional authority to act in areas under the control of the chief executive...which means presidents are not in any way BYPASSING congress when they're acting under their constitutional authority.

But, you jumped the shark again when you said "anything not explicitly controlled by Congress is under the president's purview".

That's crap and anyone who ever read the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution would know it's crap.

Further, when presidents act under the authority given in certain laws by congress which passed that law to make rules to implement laws congress passed, they have EXPLICIT authority delegated by Congress and therefore are in no way BYPASSING congress when they issue executive orders to implement THOSE laws.

Your nonsense is so convoluted, off base and lacking in logic and fact it's no wonder you're making yourself dizzy as you attempt to spin your way out of the erroneous statements you make.

posted February 07, 2014 11:32 AM            

quote:

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Now, you're agreeing with me again that presidents don't need congressional approval..when they have express constitutional authority to act in areas under the control of the chief executive...which means presidents are not in any way BYPASSING congress when they're acting under their constitutional authority.

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I'm agreeing with myself as usual. Not all "express constitutional authority" is achieved through Congressional oversight or legislation. The Executive has had certain powers from the start.

quote:

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But, you jumped the shark again when you said "anything not explicitly controlled by Congress is under the president's purview".

That's crap and anyone who ever read the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution would know it's crap.

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I'm beginning to see that any time you call something "crap" it's absolutely true. Citing the 10th Amendment is laughable. We haven't been talking about State's rights, have we? No. Bringing up the 10th, which deals specifically with State's rights, is a fool's errand. What I said stands.

quote:

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Further, when presidents act under the authority given in certain laws by congress which passed that law to make rules to implement laws congress passed, they have EXPLICIT authority delegated by Congress and therefore are in no way BYPASSING congress when they issue executive orders to implement THOSE laws.

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Once again, "You're trying to make the case that because some historical legislation might come to bear that it materially amounts to consulting Congress in order to implement an agenda. That is false, and has been false from the start." Do you understand this message this time?

posted February 07, 2014 11:50 AM            

You are agreeing with what I said from the start. You're just not mentally competent enough to know you are.

Another argument you've lost to add to the very long list acoustic.

posted February 07, 2014 11:58 AM            

quote:

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I'm beginning to see that any time you call something "crap" it's absolutely true.

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posted February 07, 2014 12:07 PM            

By Dana D. Nelson
October 11, 2008

In answering Gwen Ifill's question about vice presidential powers at last week's debate, Joe Biden redirected attention to the still not very well known concept of the "unitary executive."

Biden charged that Dick Cheney had become "the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history" because of his attempts to create a super-powerful unitary executive. Biden didn't take time to explain exactly what he meant, but it's an extremely important, poorly understood subject, and it's time to question the presidential candidates -- closely -- about it.

Plenty of presidents have worked to increase presidential power over the years, but the theory of the unitary executive, first proposed under President Reagan, has been expanded since then by every president, Democrat and Republican alike. Reagan's notion was that only a strong president would be able to dramatically limit big government. Perhaps drawing on a model for unitary corporate leadership in which the CEO also serves as chairman of the board, the so-called unitary executive promised undivided presidential control of the executive branch and its agencies, expanded unilateral powers and avowedly adversarial relations with Congress.

In the years that followed, Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society conservatives worked to provide a constitutional cover for this theory, producing thousands of pages in the 1990s claiming -- often erroneously and misleadingly -- that the framers themselves had intended this model for the office of the presidency.

Unitarians (for lack of a better word) want to expand the many existing uncheckable executive powers -- such as executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements -- that already allow presidents to enact a good deal of foreign and domestic policy without aid, interference or consent from Congress. Ardent proponents even insist that there are times when the president -- like a king -- should operate above the law.

Presidents and their supporters justify the unitary executive with an expansive reading of Article II of the Constitution (which sets out the role of the executive branch), invariably citing congressional log-jamming (what we used to call "checking and balancing") or national security.

Each president since 1980 has used the theory to seize more and more power. Reagan used expanded unilateral powers to launch an era of deregulation. Presidents George H.W. Bush, Clinton and George W. Bush all used the legislative signing statement -- the written text they are allowed to give when signing a bill into law in order to explain their position -- not simply to offer warnings and legal interpretations but to make unilateral determinations about the validity of the provisions of particular statutes. The American Bar Assn. denounced this practice in 2006 as presenting "grave harm to the separation of powers doctrine, and the system of checks and balances, that have sustained our democracy for more than two centuries."

One problem is that presidential unilateralism can seem reassuring in times of crisis, so it often receives congressional support. Most recently, in the name of managing our fiscal crisis, Congress has granted unprecedented powers to the executive and to an unelected and unaccountable secretary of the Treasury.

Another problem is that once Congress gives powers to the executive branch, it seldom can get them back. In 2001, Congress granted Bush the authorization to use military force against terrorists; five years later, when Congress sought to take back some of that authority by passing a bipartisan anti-torture bill, Bush was unwilling to back down. Instead, he signed the bill into law but appended a signing statement insisting that he would uphold the law in a manner consistent with "the constitutional authority of the president to supervise the unitary executive branch and as commander in chief." In other words, he would ignore its provisions if he felt they limited his authority.

Bush's aggressive exercise of unilateral powers has attracted serious opposition. Unfortunately, too many imagine that the unitary executive doctrine and its kingly prerogatives will leave office with him. That hope is false. History teaches that presidents do not give up power -- both Democrats and Republicans have worked to keep it. And besides, hoping the next president will give back some powers means conceding that it is up to him to make that decision.

If people have found Bush's exercise of executive power alarming, they should not only begin questioning presidential candidates about it, they should make it clear to their congressional representatives that they want these excess powers checked. Barack Obama has already promised that he will continue using signing statements, though he will not act as if they have the force of law. Interestingly enough, John McCain has suggested he will end the practice. These slim indicators deserve more pressure and scrutiny.

Dana D. Nelson, a professor of American studies at Vanderbilt University, is the author of "Bad for Democracy: How the Presidency Undermines the Power of the People."

Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-nelson11-2008oct11,0,224216.story#ixzz2segqoQcA

Once again, I hope that a word about it from one of your own will set you straight. I personally think she went wrong in suggesting that this something originating with Ronald Reagan. Perhaps the term "unitary executive" did arise out of his administration, but the history of the Executive shows that Presidents long before Reagan's time were taking power to themselves.

United States Presidents issue executive orders to help officers and agencies of the executive branch manage the operations within the federal government itself. Executive orders have the full force of law[1] when they take authority from a power granted directly to the Executive by the Constitution, or are made in pursuance of certain Acts of Congress that explicitly delegate to the President some degree of discretionary power (delegated legislation). Like statutes or regulations promulgated by government agencies, executive orders are subject to judicial review, and may be struck down if deemed by the courts to be unsupported by statute or the Constitution. Major policy initiatives usually require approval by the legislative branch, but executive orders have significant influence over the internal affairs of government, deciding how and to what degree laws will be enforced, dealing with emergencies, waging war, and in general fine policy choices in the implementation of broad statutes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States)

Critics have accused presidents of abusing executive orders, of using them to make laws without Congressional approval, and of moving existing laws away from their original mandates.[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States)

Undoubtedly, they made these arguments even before Obama ran for President.

As of 1999, U.S. courts have overturned only two executive orders: the aforementioned Truman order and a 1995 order issued by President Clinton that attempted to prevent the federal government from contracting with organizations that had strike-breakers on the payroll.[12] Congress was able to overturn an executive order by passing legislation in conflict with it during the period of 1939 to 1983 until the Supreme Court ruled in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha that Congress may not promulgate a statute granting to itself a legislative veto over actions of the executive branch inconsistent with the bicameralism principle and Presentment Clause of the United States Constitution.[13]
The loss of the legislative veto has caused Congress to look for alternative measures to override executive orders such as refusing to approve funding necessary to carry out certain policy measures contained with the order or to legitimize policy mechanisms. In the former, the president retains the power to veto such a decision; however, the Congress may override a veto with a two-thirds majority to end an executive order. It has been argued that a Congressional override of an executive order is a nearly impossible event due to the supermajority vote required and the fact that such a vote leaves individual lawmakers very vulnerable to political criticism.[14] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States)

posted February 07, 2014 12:10 PM            

quote:

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You are agreeing with what I said from the start. You're just not mentally competent enough to know you are.

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posted February 07, 2014 03:43 PM            

With demorats in control of the US Senate, Congress isn't calling the Marxist Messiah on it.

But wait, the demorat majority in the Senate is in grave jeopardy in this year's midterm elections. If demorats lose control of the Senate, watch what happens next.

Careful about agreeing with yourself acoustic. That would make you twice wrong.

"all executive orders do, in fact, bypass Congress in order to implement an agenda."..acoustic

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong...as I proved:

"United States Presidents issue executive orders to help officers and agencies of the executive branch manage the operations within the federal government itself. Executive orders have the full force of law[1] when they take authority from a power granted directly to the Executive by the Constitution, or are made in pursuance of certain Acts of Congress that explicitly delegate to the President some degree of discretionary power (delegated legislation)."

And then...you began agreeing with me. You need to get it right the first time. Then you won't get caught making absurd, ridiculous, indefensible arguments.

You know acoustic, like your absurd, ridiculous, indefensible statement that powers not granted to presidents by the Constitution are granted to congress...by the constitution.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

"The powers not delegated to the United States..{Executive, Legislative or Judicial branch}...by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

posted February 07, 2014 04:19 PM            

quote:

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Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong...as I proved:

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You didn't prove anything.

quote:

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And then...you began agreeing with me. You need to get it right the first time. Then you won't get caught making absurd, ridiculous, indefensible arguments.

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No. I contradicted you, and have continued to contradict you. I did point out that you cited information I provided to you, but you still indicate that you don't understand that information despite having attempted to use it to debate me.

quote:

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You know acoustic, like your absurd, ridiculous, indefensible statement that powers not granted to presidents by the Constitution are granted to congress...by the constitution.

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That's the opposite of what I said, and what I said remains true. You haven't even tried disproving that. You tried posting the 10th Amendment, and I see you still are, but you don't get that the 10th Amendment has no bearing on the conversation we're having. We're talking about the Executive and the Legislative branches. We're not broaching the powers of States [or people] whatsoever. If we were in a law class I think you'd be thrown out for your complete inability to grasp what you're throwing out.

quote:

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Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

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posted February 07, 2014 05:43 PM            

"all executive orders do, in fact, bypass Congress in order to implement an agenda."..acoustic

No they don't acoustic as I proved.

Further acoustic I proved your statement: all powers not delegated to the president are delegated to congress is totally false.

posted February 07, 2014 07:25 PM            

quote:

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"all executive orders do, in fact, bypass Congress in order to implement an agenda."..acoustic

No they don't acoustic as I proved.

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Yeah, that's why that Wikipedia article I quoted stated:

Critics have accused presidents of abusing executive orders, of using them to make laws without Congressional approval, and of moving existing laws away from their original mandates.[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order_(United_States)

This speaks to my point, not yours. It speaks directly in opposition to what you've been trying to pass as a point. This is just one of several sources I can cite that critique this way. The American Bar Association came out against Signing Statements for doing the same thing. http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/leadership/2006/annual/dailyjournal/20060823144113.authcheckdam.pdf

quote:

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Further acoustic I proved your statement: all powers not delegated to the president are delegated to congress is totally false.

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That's not what I said. Here is what I said, exactly as I said it:

"Executive Orders are instructions for the running of the government. Anything not explicitly controlled by Congress is under the President's purview. He is free, within reason and within law, to inform the administration of how it is to go about its work. These instructions are not subject to Congressional approval, and they do constitute fulfilling the agenda of the administration."

I don't know why you'd think I wasn't talking specifically about the Federal government. I think that for anyone else it would be perfectly clear that when we are discussing Executive Orders, we are talking about the Federal government. Am I wrong here, anyone?

If you need me to further translate my own words into a format that you understand them, I was saying that the running of the Federal government, in as much as some functions are not under the direction of Congress through legislation, those same functions are under the direction of the President. In other words, the running of the government is done, in part, in compliance with Congressional legislation, and also in remainder via the Executive.

Nothing about State or people power were ever discussed. Nor did we discuss all the powers possible via Local, State, and Federal agencies. We're simply discussing Executive power, the power to write Executive Orders, and to what end Executive Orders can and do amount. Can they amount to implementing an agenda without Congressional assent? Yes. Can that be Constitutional? Yes. Is Congress effectively in control of Executive power? Not in any whole sense, no.

posted February 07, 2014 08:05 PM            

You don't really get it do you acoustic?

There are no powers not specifically delegated to the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch which are Constitutionally lawful for Presidents or the Congress to control or even involve themselves in.

"Am I wrong here, anyone"...acoustic

Now acoustic, haven't I told you before how weak you are when you attempt to get help from other posters to bolster your flawed positions.

Admit it, you were wrong.

"all executive orders do, in fact, bypass Congress in order to implement an agenda."..acoustic

posted February 07, 2014 09:37 PM            

It's obviously who gets it here, and who doesn't.

quote:

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There are no powers not specifically delegated to the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch which are Constitutionally lawful for Presidents or the Congress to control or even involve themselves in.

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Talk about convoluted nonsense. I'm going to remove two words, and make your sentence logical. There ARE powers specifically delegated to the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch which are Constitutionally lawful for Presidents or the Congress to control or even involve themselves in. There ARE indeed. The Executive has powers derived from the Constitution as does Congress.

quote:

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Now acoustic, haven't I told you before how weak you are when you attempt to get help from other posters to bolster your flawed positions.

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I'm not weak in the slightest, nor is a poll of my coherence as a writer an indication of any such thing. I'm not on the wrong side of of the issue here. The only weakness I'm showing is the willingness to tolerate absolute idiocy from you, and I only barely tolerate that.

posted February 08, 2014 10:37 AM            

There are no powers to be exercised by either presidents or the Congress which are not specifically enumerated in the US Constitution. All powers not specifically delegated to the Congress, the president or the judicial branch of government are reserved to the states or to the people themselves.

And acoustic, you were wrong and you're still wrong.

"all executive orders do, in fact, bypass Congress in order to implement an agenda"..acoustic

Presidents exercising their authority delegated by the constitution DO NOT NEED CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL AND THEREFORE, WHEN THEY WRITE EXECUTIVE ORDERS BASED ON THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY, THEY ARE NOT BYPASSING CONGRESS.

Presidents exercising authority delegated to them explicitly in legislation congress passed DO NOT NEED CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY TO WRITE EXECUTIVE ORDERS COVERING THE DELEGATION OF POWER GRANTED BY CONGRESS. THEY ALREADY HAVE THE DELEGATED AUTHORITY AND THEREFORE CANNOT BE SAID TO BE BYPASSING CONGRESS.

There acoustic. That should be clear, even for an obtuse fuzzy thinking leftist like you.

posted February 08, 2014 02:27 PM            

I wasn't ever wrong, and no amount of declaring otherwise will make that true.

quote:

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Presidents exercising their authority delegated by the constitution DO NOT NEED CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL AND THEREFORE, WHEN THEY WRITE EXECUTIVE ORDERS BASED ON THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY, THEY ARE NOT BYPASSING CONGRESS.

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Except for the last part, this is an accurate statement. Just because the President has Constitutional authority doesn't mean that such authority has anything to do with Congress. If this isn't "bypassing" Congress, I don't know what is. "Bypassing Congress" means not including them in the decision-making process. That's the Constitutional authority of the President through Executive Orders, which is precisely what I've been explaining to you this whole time. It's that thing you've been unsuccessful in disproving.

posted February 11, 2014 08:08 PM            

There is no single definitive Marxist theory; Marxist analysis has been applied to diverse subjects and has been misconceived and modified during the course of its development, resulting in numerous and sometimes contradictory theories that fall under the rubric of Marxism or Marxian analysis.[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

posted February 12, 2014 12:00 AM            

"A fair description of Obama and his economic goals is to say that he is 'an interventionist, corporatist, statist, Big Government progressive, free-market-hating control freak who favors economic policies of a Marxist-Leninist flavor.'" (Photo credit: Intel Photos)
It seems inevitable in an election year that people on both ends of the ideological spectrum resort to simplistic labels. On the political right, many call President Obama a socialist, because that is a simple, familiar term with the desired negative connotations. However, I agree with the actual socialists from the International Socialist Organization, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, the Party of Socialism and Liberation, and the Socialist Party USA who uniformly and correctly observe that Obama is not a dictionary-definition socialist, because he has not called for the national government to nationalize the means of production.

The problem here is that the dictionary definition of “socialist” sets an almost impossibly high bar for any leader. Even Vladimir Lenin himself couldn’t meet that standard. Actually, Lenin tried to implement pure socialism when he first came to power, but when his policies caused the Russian economy to collapse all around him, in 1921 he abandoned literal socialism and replaced it with a pragmatic, expedient reform program called the “New Economic Policy.” Under NEP, Lenin permitted various privatizations while seeking state domination of the “commanding heights” of the economy.

President Obama has emulated Lenin in striving to increase state control over such “commanding heights” of our economy as energy, health care, finance, and education, with smaller forays into food, transportation and undoubtedly some areas I am overlooking.

Besides mimicking some of Lenin’s policy strategies, Obama also has adopted Karl Marx’s strategies for gradually socializing an economy. Before I spell out the Marxian nature of many of Obama’s policies, let me emphasize that I am not calling Obama a “Marxist-Leninist, period.” “Marxist-Leninist” connotes the brutal totalitarian police state of the late, unlamented Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. There is no comparison between Barack Obama’s statism and the genocidal, gulag-riddled regime of the Soviet Communists. That being said, Obama’s economic program is taken directly, if not deliberately, from the Marxist-Leninist playbook, and on that basis one may say that Obama tends toward Marxist-Leninist economics.

Besides adopting the Leninist strategy of seeking greater control over the commanding heights of the economy, if one reviews Marx’s 10-point platform for how to socialize a country’s economy in stages (“The Communist Manifesto,” chapter two), one finds that Team Obama and his congressional progressive allies have taken actions to further the goals laid out in all 10 of the planks in the Marx platform. Here are some examples, with Marx’s wording being revised for simplicity’s sake:

1. State control of real property. Team Obama repeatedly has thwarted the development of domestic energy supplies by asserting government ownership and asserting arbitrary regulatory control over massive acreage.

2. Progressive income taxes. Obama has an Ahab-like obsession with raising taxes on “the rich” even though the top 1 percent of earners already pay 39 percent of the total income tax.

3. Abolition of inheritance. Obama favors re-institution of estate taxes.

4. Confiscation of the property of emigrants and rebels. Team Obama has declared war on offshore tax havens; has sought legal jurisdiction to tax the offshore income of multi-national corporations as well as foreign citizens and banks that have any investments in America (causing Switzerland’s oldest bank to recommend that its clients avoid all American investments);

5. Centralization of the country’s financial system in the hands of the state. Dodd-Frank was a huge step in this direction.

6. State control of means of communication and transportation. Team Obama has attempted to cow conservative media outlets like Fox News into submission through denunciation and has suggested reviving the so-called “fairness doctrine” and imposing heavier licensing fees on station owners. In the area of transportation, Obama insinuated government into the auto industry, has favored the high-speed rail boondoggle, and wishes he could compel us all to convert to “green transportation.”

7. Increase state control over means of production. Through his green energy subsidies, his failed cap-and-trade scheme, now via EPA regulation, Obama has sought state control over the industry on which most other industries depend—energy.

8 Establishment of workers’ armies. Obama has ramped up the number of Americans working for Uncle Sam by securing a large expansion of Americorps and winning passage of his Serve America Act. He also has done everything he could to strengthen labor unions.

9. Control over where people live. Team Obama doesn’t go quite this far, but one of the clear implications of cap-and-trade is that government could start to limit human mobility by controlling how far they can travel by capping energy consumption. In Brian Sussman’s book, “Eco-Tyranny,” you can read an executive order that Obama signed on October 5, 2009 that would “divide the country into sectors where all humans would be herded into urban hubs” while most of the land would be “returned to a natural state upon which humans would only be allowed to tread lightly.” (Marx wanted more equal distribution of the human population between town and country, whereas Obama favors urban concentration, but both want to control where people live.)

10. Free education. Obama has sought a federal government monopoly on student loans for higher education, and in his 2012 State of the Union Address, he called for additional funds for new federal education programs.

Clearly Barack Obama’s policies have a distinctly Marxian flavor to them. Does that mean we are destined for socialism? Certainly not yet. But Marx knew that his 10 strategies would move a society toward socialism. The great free-market economist Ludwig von Mises agreed with Marx that government interventions breed further interventions and tend inexorably toward socialism. (See his class essay, “Middle-of-the-Road Policy Leads to Socialism.”)

There is another vital point to understand about Marxist-Leninist economics: The greatest damage is done to the middle class. With his customary bloodthirsty malevolence, Lenin said, “The way to crush the bourgeoisie [middle class] is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

You may suppose that Obama isn’t implementing that aspect of Marxist-Leninist economics, but you would be mistaken. It’s true that income tax rates haven’t risen under Obama and inflation has only surfaced in a few areas (e.g., food and energy) but what you need to understand is that government borrowing is a tax hike on future taxpayers. Obama’s unprecedented deficit spending has been subsidized by the Federal Reserve, whose balance sheet has swelled as they have bought more and more federal debt (more than 60 percent of the total last year). Whenever the Fed’s zero interest rate policy ends, some combination of massive tax hikes and/or raging inflation will ensue, devastating the middle class.

Already, Obama’s economic policies have hurt the middle class. They have enervated the job market, raised food and energy bills, and been accompanied by falling incomes and net worth. If these are the results of Obama’s partial steps in a Marxist-Leninist direction, imagine the damage that would be wrought by a fuller implementation of such an agenda.

posted February 12, 2014 12:10 AM            

The CBO reports based on official IRS data that in 2009 the top 1% of income earners paid 39% of all federal income taxes, three times their share of income at 13%. Yet, the middle 20% of income earners, the true middle class, paid just 2.7% of total federal income taxes on net that year, while earning 15% of income. That means the top 1% paid almost 15 times as much in federal income taxes as the entire middle 20%, even though the middle 20% earned more income.

Moreover, the official data, as reported by CBO and the IRS, show that the bottom 40% of income earners, instead of paying some income taxes to support the federal government, were paid cash by the IRS equal to 10% of federal income taxes as a group on net.

Any normal person would say that such an income tax system is more than fair, or maybe that “the rich” pay more than their fair share. So why does President Obama keep saying that the rich do not pay their fair share? Is he ignorant? Wouldn’t somebody in his Administration whisper to him that he is peddling nonsense?

The answer is that to President Obama this is still not fair because he is a Marxist. To a Marxist, the fact that the top 1% earn more income than the bottom 99% is not fair, no matter how they earn it, fairly or not. So it is not fair unless more is taken from the top 1% until they are left only with what they “need,” as in any true communist system. Paying anything less is not their “fair” share. That is the only logical explanation of President Obama’s rhetoric, and it is 100% consistent with his own published background.

Notice that Obama keeps saying that “the rich,” a crass term implying low class social envy, don’t “need” the Bush tax cuts. That is reminiscent of the fundamental Marxist principle, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Good tax policy is not guided by “need.” It is guided by what is needed to establish the incentives to maximize economic growth. The middle class, working people and the poor are benefited far more by economic growth than by redistribution. That is shown by the entire 20th century, where the standard of living of American workers increased by more than 7 times, through sustained, rapid economic growth.

But President Obama’s tax policy of increasing all tax rates on savings and investment will work exactly contrary to such economic growth. It is savings and investment which creates jobs and increases productivity and wages. Under capitalism, capital and labor are complementary, not adversarial, exactly contrary to the misunderstanding of Marxists. More capital investment increases the demand for labor, bidding up wages to the level of worker productivity, which is enhanced by the capital investment.

Increasing marginal tax rates on savings and investment, however, will mean less of it, not more. That will mean fewer jobs, and lower wages, just as we have experienced so far under President Obama, with median household incomes (hello middle class) declining by 7.3% (a month’s worth of wages) during his first term, even faster after the recession supposedly ended in 2009. That will only get worse in Obama’s unearned second term, which can only be explained as “democracy failure” analogous to “market failure.”

If the tax increases are limited to those who earn $1 million or more, I don’t know if that alone will be enough to create a recession, as I am certain would be the result with Obama’s original policy of targeting couples making over $250,000 a year, and singles making over $200,000.

But there is so much in the Obama economic program that is contractionary. His second term promises enormous new regulatory burdens and barriers. The EPA is shutting down the coal industry, and Interior will join with it to sharply constrain oil production further, despite Obama’s duplicitous campaign rhetoric taking credit for the production produced by the policies and efforts of others. I expect Obama’s EPA to burden natural gas fracking until it goes the way of the coal industry as well, stealing new found prosperity for many Americans. All of this will sharply raise energy prices, which will be another effective tax on the economy.

Moreover, President Obama has said that a priority in his second term will be global warming, even though global temperatures have not been increasing for 16 years now, and the developing world led by Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries), which are contributing to “greenhouse gases” at a much greater accelerating rate than the U.S., have rejected sacrificing any slice of their economies to that ideological phantom. While even the Democrat Congress of Obama’s first term failed to adopt “cap and trade,” EPA is advancing with global warming regulations that will cost the economy trillions in still another effective tax.

Then there are the onrushing regulatory burdens of Obamacare, including the employer mandate, which will require all businesses with 50 employees or more to buy the most expensive health insurance available. That will be an effective tax on employment. As Obamacare forces up the cost of health insurance, that will be still another effective tax increase on all employers already providing health coverage. Hundreds of regulations still in the pipeline under the “Dodd-Frank” legislation are already forcing the financial sector to contract, and threaten the business and consumer credit essential to full recovery.

In addition, few are adequately considering the longer term contractionary effects of the Fed’s current policy mischief. For years now, businesses and investments have been launched all over the country based on the near zero interest rates, and even below zero real rates, that Fed policies have perpetuated, along with the easy free money . When those rates inevitably rise back to normal, most likely after these Fed policies have resparked inflation, the basis for those businesses and investments will be gone, and many if not most will go into liquidation, which will be highly contractionary as well.

However, I am certain in any event that the Obama tax increases will result in less revenue rather than more. Obama has been proposing to increase the capital gains tax rate by 58% on the nation’s job creators, investors and successful small businesses, counting his Obamacare tax increases that take effect on January 1 as well the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. While his misleading talking points say there will be no tax increases for 97% of small businesses, that counts every Schedule C filed for every part time or hobby sole proprietorship, however marginal the earnings. The small businesses that would bear President Obama’s originally proposed tax increases earn 91% of all small business income, and employ 54% of the total private sector U.S. work force, as reported in Investors Business Daily on November 9.

Over the last 45 years, every time capital gains tax rates have been raised, revenues have fallen, and every time they have been cut, revenues have increased. The capital gains rate was raised 4 times from 1968 to 1975, climbing from 25% to 35%. The 25% rate produced real capital gains revenues in 1968 of $40.6 billion in 2000 dollars. By 1975, at the higher rate, capital gains revenues had plummeted to $19.6 billion in constant 2000 dollars, less than half as much.

After the capital gains rate was cut from 35% to 20% from 1978 to 1981, capital gains revenues had tripled by 1986 compared to 1978. Then the capital gains rate was raised by 40% in 1987 to 28%. By 1991, capital gains revenues had collapsed to $34.4 billion, down from $92.9 billion in 1986, in constant 2000 dollars adjusted for inflation.

Obama’s capital gains tax increase next year will reduce capital gains revenues again as well.

Similarly, when President Bush slashed the income tax on corporate dividends, dividends paid soared, and revenues from taxation of those dividends soared along with them. With Obama’s tax on dividends reversing that Bush tax cut, those revenue gains will also be reversed.

Finally, those earning over $1 million are the most financially agile of all taxpayers. They can move, shelter, and transform income more easily than anyone else. Most likely, the number of American millionaires, or at least American taxpayers reporting a million in income, will plummet after the Obama tax increases, and so will income taxes paid by millionaires.

Of course, if the tax increases and other policies of Obamanomics push the economy back into recession, total federal revenues will decline rather than rise. Federal deficits and debt will soar further, along with unemployment and poverty, while jobs, wages and incomes decline further. That is what happened the last time federal economic policy followed the preferred prescription of the Washington Establishment, and also adopted a package of tax increases, in return for chimerical spending reductions, when George H.W. Bush was President.

Can such public policy malpractice make any sense? President Obama says it is “fair” in his redistributionist sense of fairness. But what is fair about fewer jobs, lower wages, and higher unemployment, poverty, federal deficits, and national debt, at the price of higher taxes, for anybody?