America a Nation of Grifters

I just sent this e-mail to Paul Smart, editor of the Olive Press in Phoenicia, New York. 

Dear Editor:

In 1950 Americans paid $43.5 billion in taxes to the federal government.  In 2010 they will pay about $2.2 trillion, 50 times as much, according to US Government Revenue.com.  Of course, those numbers need to be adjusted for increased population and inflation. A dollar in 1950 would be worth $9.05 today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  That is, inflation has been 900% and federal tax revenues have increased 5000% since 1950. As well population has doubled, from 151.3 million to 309 million, since 1950.   Taking population and inflation into account, federal tax revenues have increased from $287 per capita in 1950 dollars to $774 per capita in 1950 dollars, almost a threefold increase from 1950 to 2010.

The letters of your readers show why the real hourly wage has stagnated since 1970.  Hard working Americans have allowed fast talking grifters, socialists, commercial bankers, school teachers, hedge fund managers and other beneficiaries of governmental thievery to bleed them dry.  One of your readers, apparently educated in one of America's   mind-numbing socialist public schools, claims that the threefold per capita tax increase since 1950 did not occur and that taxes are lower now than in the 1950s.  Another complains that class sizes of 20-25 students are too large. Another demands increased spending on nursing homes. 

Well, I can be a grifter too.  I have the most important demand.  As a professor, the salaries of professors are too low. So mine must be raised. At everyone else's expense.  All America should labor on my behalf.  Taxes should be raised and the excess paid to me and my union, NYSUT. Those who disagree are selfish and greedy. I must have a raise. You must pay.  

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert

Paladino Opposes Ground Zero Mosque

 Michael Caputo of the Paladino campaign just forwarded this New York Post article:

>Andrew Cuomo and his GOP challengers are splitting sharply on the hotly contested question of building a mosque near Ground Zero, even as they're in surprising agreement on the need to cut taxes and spending.

Attorney General Cuomo said he favored building the mosque, which polls show is opposed by most city residents, including many who say it would be an insult to 9/11 victims...

...Buffalo builder and megamillionaire Carl Paladino, a Tea Party activist expected to challenge Lazio in the GOP primary, said, "I am dead set against the mosque at Ground Zero because it's an affront to Americans everywhere.

"It just doesn't make sense to build a needlessly bold and insulting statement on hallowed ground where radical Islamists declared war on America."

Read more of Fred Dicker's column at the New York Post HERE:

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/andy_rivals_in_mosque_split_wMWJlBDZge8yF3sJlYhcRL#ixzz0spEb6AnI

Independence Day Message Re President Obama from the Czech Republic

Bob Robbins sent the following quote from a Prague newspaper.  HBO is good enough to put the John Adams mini-series on demand for the Fourth, and I am watching the second episode.  What a difference between the brave, brilliant leaders of the Continental Congress like John and Sam Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and John Hancock and the embarrassing voting public in the United States today. 

Bob Robbins writes:


"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency.  It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president.  The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America.  Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.  The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool.  It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."

Paladino Calls for $20 Billion Medicaid Cut

Carl Paladino appeared on Curtis Sliwa's radio show in New York City. He called for a $20 billion cut in Medicaid, which would bring New York's per capita costs in line with California's.  He also called for an end to New York's providing benefits to recently arrived non-residents.  At almost $80 billion (according to Governor Paterson's proposed budget) that alone would constitute a 25% budget cut.

No other Republican has been so bold in proposing cuts in Albany's mismanagement.