The terms “a priori” and “a posteriori” are used in philosophy to distinguish two different types of knowledge, justification, or argument: a priori knowledge is known independently of experience, and a posteriori knowledge is proven through experience. So what is the answer to the question: “are taxes going to be raised on people who make less than $250,000 a year?
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Now to the more interesting epistemological question: why did so many believe that taxes were not going to be raised on people making less than $250,000? A totally cynical person might argue that it was in the candidate’s best interest to shade the truth, but why was it in the voter’s interests to buy into it?
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Who is John Galt?
Wretchard: “Why was it in the voter’s interests to buy into it?”
Answer: Because they vote on faith. Tell the spoiled rich kid who’s never been outside that the grass is greener on the other side of town, and then sell it to him. They’ll believe it, as long as the scam artist is “one of the cool guys.”
Of course Nanny Obananarama will raise taxes across the board. He’ll just label the new tax a “global warming prevention surcharge” or a “save the world’s children fund” or something hip sounding.
Higher taxes, lower defenses. That’s the liberal formula in four words.
Though seems irrational to make the argument, I think a certain percentage supported Obama even though they suspected he wasn’t being completely forthright. In fact, some posts ago I discussed the argument that some of the President’s supporters trusted him because they knew he was lying to them. It was the lying that proved his sincerity to a wider context, to a deeper set of allegiances, and to a larger agenda than the confining terms of reference of a mere political campaign.
But it’s more likely, I think, that most people fell for the old human desire to get something for nothing. Pitchmen the world over know how to work this angle to their advantage. They don’t actually say you’ll get something for nothing, but they can recreate the emotional impression that you are. The rising music, the soaring cadences, the winks all around. Then on the morrow comes the payment demand in the mail, the hangover after the bender, the note from the lady whose last name you realize you don’t know. And the sinking realization that there’s no exit.
To get elected, part of Nanny Obananarama’s trick is to talk out of two different sides of his mouth. One message says, “wink, nod, I’m one of YOU.” The other says, “Hey, I’m just lying to THEM to get YOU what YOU want.”
That’s why Obananarama can get away with saying anything without getting castigated by his followers.
Trouble is, both messages are actually convenient lies just to grab power and implement government takeovers.
Wonder if a politician is more electable when he can lie out of two sides of his mouth instead of just one. Certainly it could take his followers longer to figure him out. On the one hand, I’d like to see the looks on his followers’ faces when they get their mondo-sized monthly electricity bill after Cap and Trade. On the other hand, that disguised tax will be the death of us, so hope it never happens.
Here are my answers to tonight’s quiz:
Can I get my grade now? (Please note that anything less than an “A” will cause me to pester and complain until I get what I want, since I am entitled to nothing less than an “A”.)
L3
Who is John Galt?
What no one remembers Atlas Shrugged?
I am old…..
I would suggest that they will make some subtle adjustments to the AMT tax to catch more people/money in the 60-90% median income range. For starters.
They already are out in the open about raising taxes on people over $250K annual income; plus raising the wage cap on Social Security taxes.
Return of inheritance taxes, with a vengeance. Plus the expiration in 2010 of the “Bush tax cuts”.
And of course, like the proverbial dog whistle, or Mr. Fernandez “other channel”, many people voting for Obama heard this, and still supported him.
Somebody’s got to pay for all this stimulus. Leo, you will have to work harder; millions of people are depending on your taxes (and those like you) to support them.
“From each according to their abilities……”
“Because the alternative (McCain) was unappealing in too many ways.”
L3 gets an A+. Right on target.
If you look at actual votes cast, Obama pretty much got the tribal Democrat votes — the same percentage of citizens as have voted Democrat in every Presidential election since Watergate. McCain failed to attract the Contingent Voters — that large but usually ignored group who will vote for a Reagan or a Perot, but will never vote for a squishy Republican just to keep out an even squishier Democrat.
The more interesting question now concerns the future decisions of that small minority of Democrat Representatives & Senators who actually live with the possibility of being voted out at the next election. How will they react to Presidential prevarication? The President proposes, but Congress disposes — if they so choose.
Why did he not just say he was not going to raise taxes on anyone and instead just get the money from “the big corporations” (yuk, yuk, almost no one knows who that really is)?
Because “raising taxes on everyone who makes over $250K a year” was not a bug but a feature.
An experiment was done a few years back. Some of a group of people were given lots of imaginary money and made “rich.” Others of the group were given little imaginary money and were “poor.” Then people were allowed to spend some of their money to cancel out others’ money. Spend $100 and cause another guy to lose $100 with no gain on your part. And many of the “poor” did just that, impoverished themselves to make the “rich” a little less rich. That’s what Obama promised with his tax plan.
So it really does not matter if he raises taxes on everyone who makes over $250 or over $250K; everyone gets poorer.
Communism is the philosophy of the mediocre, the angry mediocre.
Wretchard/4–no, she leaves a note but that, unfortunately, is not the end of it. Next comes the discomfort with micturition, then the presence of foul material, then an ooze and rash in the nether regions, and you begin to think of San Francisco and Africa and you wonder what the hell you’ve gotten for that wonderful thrill that now seems so long ago.
Once again (and forgive me in advance, Mongoose) I affirm, aver, declare, avow, avouch, profess, and guarantee…
these clowns (the Obama-ites) are going down!
Jamie Irons
Did people buy the proposition that candidate Obama would not raise taxes on those making less than $250,000? I am not certain of that. Pepole just may have decided that it did not matter. I think a lot of people are convinced the nation is crumbling. The History Channel just ran a special with the thesis that the state of our infrastructure is “third worldish”. Of course, such lurid descriptions are hyperbole but a lot of people have no basis on which to dismiss that as hyperbole.
Our governments (at all levels) complain they have no more money and if they don’t our bridges will fall, our dams burst, our roads become full of “lubak-lubak” (holes & bumps). So, people have become convinced that extra $120/month they got under the Bush tax cuts is not that much and they can do without if it means stronger dams, smoother roads, etc. Of course that money will be gone before it comes close to any such project and the poor state of our infrastructure will once again be trotted out with silly hat & tin cup in hand.
Obama went to great pains emphasizing how nobody making over a certain number would pay new taxes under his plans. John McCain gained traction on very few issues against Obama during the campaign and the debates, but this was one of them. The Obama campaign even featured a “Tax Calculator” program on its website where you could see how your taxes would change under the Obama administration, and Obama himself urged us during the debates to go plug in our numbers and see where we’d wind up.
I did. According the Obama plan I’m going to pay $1,800.00 less in federal taxes this year than last.
That’s simply not going to happen. I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now.
This was always a lie, and it was a major, emphatic lie, sent out by Obama.
Why people got snookered, who knows? I suspect the reason is simple. They wanted to believe that it could be true. They wanted to believe that all this hocus pocus was possible, if only we had the savy kind of right-thinking people in charge, then it could all be managed.
That was a mistake, as always.
A few years ago in a Canadian election, one party whose platform is based on ‘tax the rich’ was asked to define ‘rich’.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2000/11/21/ndp001121.html
$60,000
Derek
People voted for Obama because he is black. No one else would have gotten away with the same proposed policies and lack of experience.
It had nothing to do with whether or not they actually believed his promises.
You cannot deny that the media was supremely effective in making the sale. Those who read the media revenue declines mistakenly believed, or so it seems, that the old media was dead.
Who in the dextrosphere comforted us with — and still cling to — that allusion, viz., “the dinosaur media is toothless?” Even the voter fraud…. Oh why bother listing the worst examples out of a long litany of new media’s failure. Who will admit it?
Not only that. None of the culpable will cop to the fact that they still act as if the establishment media is dead. The only thing really dead at MSM is their pretext of trying to appear unbiased.
Rich is now, today, if you are working AT ALL! If you have A JOB, then you are to be considered “Rich”!
The statement Gibberish made when asked a direct question: “…I think in some ways your question is a hypothetical one…”. JeeBus! This guy thinks we are all stupid! Or is so arrogant that he thinks he can get away with anything. In the real world, he cannot, but I am not sure we are living in the real anymore. I believe we may have moved into ‘Cloud-Cuckoo Land’ somehow.
If there is any justice left in the world, it will be televised when we put this apparatchik against a wall.
The current kerfluffle over Honduras should be the bellwether about who and what The 0bamanation really is. Even FauxNews is glossing the whole thing over.
Gordon @ 11: I LOL’ed!!!!! I really did! Thanks!
[O/T] From http://tinyurl.com/l5d4v4 : a Real Estate Blog on contents of the Cap’N Trade bill: “If there are Building Performance Labeling standards to be assigned to homes complete with inspections and requirements to upgrade homes to a base line standard (arbitrarily able to be changed) many of the older homes will not sell unless modification are made.” Which means that your older home has to meet Fed standards for you to be even able to sell it. Heck, folks, I thought The 0bamanation were thieves! They’re not! They’re Pirates!
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” – H. L. Mencken
It is time, Gents and Ladies.
Can I call The Won a traitor yet?
” … why was it in the voter’s interests to buy into it?”
I suspect many voters didn’t believe the no-new-taxes line would really be at $250K, but that it would be above THEIR income. Hence the impact on them personally would still be the promised zero. Fifty percent of the people don’t pay Federal taxes now anyway.
Many voters understood what was going on, but this was only one of N dimensions to their decision. And probably not the most important dimension. The “McCain was a sorry candidate and poor alternative” issue falls here.
Many voters just don’t understand. The average voter IQ is probably 30 IQ points under the Belmont Club crowd. Not very analytical, more or less innumerate. It never got past who looked better on TV. They didn’t “buy in” – they heard the words, but it pretty much didn’t register.
Its also likely that a large fraction of the voters were completely unaware of the issue, so it had zero bearing on their vote – no “buy in” there either.
Then there are some (direct and indirect government workers, hangers-on) for who a bigger government spend means job security and more money their pocket, even if their personal taxes go up. They had a direct interest in “buying in”.
helodrvr simple but so true. This farce will last as long as the first group of useful idiots crack. Mainstream media, not likely; elitist, hardcore to stubborn; black minority coalitions, never; Wall Street, complete whores who will sleep with anyone; Hollywood/Jewish rat pack, yep they see a real threat and are showing signs of disillusionment.
Many people don’t seem to be able to understand that cap and trade is implicitly a tax.
I wonder about some of the more unusual plays Obama could make: strip Roth IRAs and Roth 401ks of their tax exemption on benefit payouts, for example. Only the evil rich have those.
How soon we forget. The past election was basically a referendum on the GOP, and their candidate in particular. Obama, despite the relentless cheerleading by the media, got only 52% of the vote. The GOP was painted, successfully, as the party of the rich bankers and fat cats who were in the process of bankrupting our country. People voted for the other guy. They projected on him the things they wanted to see. It’s as simple as that IMO.
Bob/21; the new balloon is to cap deductions at the 28% level on the grounds that, as the president said a day or two ago, those above the 28% have those big houses and get that big deduction (unfair! screamed the tone and exprssion, tho the word itself wasn’t explicitly said).
Oh, it’s nothing, really; just a bloody little war on the behavioral and attitudinal spirits of free market ambition and exuberance.
The new notion is, i suppose, that a lack of hatred for ‘the rich’ (on the grounds that that if nothing else, at bottom, we all do better when we are all as unfettered as morally and ethically possible) is a priori illegitimizing and a disqualifier for participation in the (formerly) traditional ongoing national debate on what should be public and what should be private.
Obama won because a lot of Americans wanted to vote for the black guy. Because they thought they could afford to use their votes as personal statements, as consumption: it made them feel good to vote for him. Because having known only freedom and material abundance, unique in history, they thought that freedom and abundance were conditions of nature rather than the fruits of an extraordinary political culture that depended on an educated, virtuous citizenry and eternal vigilance for its preservation. Because the system had survived for so long that they didn’t understand that it was possible to exceed the design margins. In the future, maybe some of these people will, if they get another chance to vote, take elections as seriously as Iraqis do. Or maybe it won’t come to that and we’ll vote the bums out in two or four years. But it’s starting to look as though anything may be possible.
I lived through Jimmah Cahtuh. I despised that man and his entourage with every fiber of my being. I made it a point to be back in the U.S. for the 1980 election despite the requirements of my career just so I could vote against him.
I did this because I knew the country was at stake. Reagan and Thatcher seemed to be like two Stonewall Jacksons at Manassas standing firm against what seemed to be an overwhelming and unstoppable tide of leftist treason and idiocy. I wanted to make certain I never had to regret not having done my part to put paid to Carter and his cronies.
Four years of that clown, and another eight bright years of Reagan, and people began to see the light. Some of us had always recoiled from the darkness and loathed its touch. Others had to learn from experience and it was painful. Eventually many of them did learn the lesson, however, and that set the stage for 1994.
Obama is this generation’s Carter. When he’s done the leftists will have to wear him like a rotting albatross around their necks for the next twenty years while all the right will have to do is say, “Remember Obama? You want that AGAIN?”
The sad thing is that Kipling was right, and the burnt fool’s bandaged finger always does go wabbling back to the fire. The people who voted for Obama, for the most part, aren’t serious. They’re the same type of people who voted for Carter. They thought it was “the right thing to do” at the time and that it wouldn’t cost much to indulge their misguided and misplaced altruism. Big mistake on their part, and they’re already paying for it. It will get MUCH worse.
Before Obama’s Administration is over he’s going to have kicked an awful lot of regular people squarely in the groin with his policies. That will be what it takes to wake those unserious people up, but after four years of steadily diminishing opportunity and things deteriorating on a daily basis, they’ll be awake. When they get the chance to pay Obama back at the ballot box, they’ll remember the pain.
mac
I remember Jimmah too. I was a young man working construction at the time. Never voted, and my political beliefs, on whatever basis they were formed, coincided with the editorial page of the Baltimore Sun. I just couldn’t be bothered to think things through on my own, and it was much cooler to agree with everyone else and parrot the conventional wisdom, when we even spoke of such things. All I was worried about was women, driving nails and drinking beer.
Well, Jimmah woke me up, and I cast my first ballot for President Reagan. Surprisingly, 20% mortgage rates tended to dry up the construction industry. Whoda thunk it?
Also about this time I picked up a copy of the Washington Times on a lark. I wanted to see what a Moonie paper looked like. Well, after reading the editorial page I realized that much of what they said was correct, or at the least was worthy of thought.
I’m pretty certain that many of our current young people will have a similar experience before this is all through. Hard times tend to cut through the BS, and there’s plenty of that flying around just now.
dtmack/26; that’s me too almost word for word, subbing oilpatch for construction and for the Washington Times, the WSJ, picked up to find an ‘inflation stock’ (since a firstborn in the midst of Carter was brutalizing my inner Pangloss), and where idly perusing a Robert Bartley editorial one bleak afternoon woke me up but good.
Buddy,
Yeah, Jimmy converted a lot of us. I suspect Obama will do the same.
RWE @#10,
“An experiment was done a few years back…”
In a college psychology class they taught us some scary facts about our personal constraints on sadism.
Several experiments were conducted to find the limits to personal altruism. First, take one person and place a rigged button in front of her, and tell her that every time a bell rings she is to hit the button. But also point out that every time she hits the button, she will deliver a painful shock to the person in the next room. With the victim in the next room, and a window providing a view of the recipient’s pain response, few of the button-punchers would obey the ringing bell.
But…
…Put more people into the button-punching loops, such as two or three people, each punching a button in response to subsequent bells, and each cognizant that one of the buttons in the series delivers a painful shock to a subject, and then hide the victim – provide no portal through which to see him and put him out of ear-shot, like on an adjacent campus, and the series of button-punchers will punch away, their consciences untroubled by their knowing participation in group sadism.
Essentially, the further one is removed personally from the victim, the more likely one will see nothing wrong with victimizing the subject.
And with regards to tax policy, distancing the group “tax recipients” from their victims, producers, is the Progressive’s game. Since I learned my early Psych at a junior college in Washington, I’m sure Alinsky, Axelrod, et al must know this particular mob-rule, too. But, what does it say about Obama’s appraisal of American civic life that he’d harness group sadism in a bid to “transform” our domestic civic order?
dtmack, i was working in S America during Carter, and my local associates were wondering if we had gone crazy. i heard more than a few times that abandoning the Canal would get a war started sooner or later.
The GOP was painted, successfully, as the party of the rich bankers and fat cats
If you bother to pay attention, it’s obvious (in my opinion) both the Democrat base and Democrat politicians themselves are notably and visibly wealthier than their Republican counterparts. How they manage to convince the world the opposite is true is beyond me.
A priori I made my last comment (at post 17) and A posteriori I am vindicated: Washington Post sells access, $25,000+.
Old media still has such teeth that it can offer them for a price. Who doubts it will be able to keep itself afloat in this manner for awhile even without direct government bailouts?
It is not fair of Wretchard or any other analyst to blame voters solely for the results in November when they are left uninformed by primary information services. It is akin to blaming Iranian voters for their recent election outcome.
TRUTH SEEKERS MUST BECOME THE MEDIA.
Underestimating MSM will only lead to the entrenchment of the Ministry of Truth.
Bob Smith at 31. How they manage to convince the world the opposite is true is beyond me.
Relentless propaganda, especially when in combination with ineffectual opposition, works.
#28 They can only convert you from liberal Lala Land to a conservative leader if there is a viable alternative – who would that be? McCain? No, Palin? I’m sorry, No. Sanford? Right now the Republican party is being branded as the ship of fools. Where is Stonewall Jackson?
#7
Who is John Galt?
I’m sorry – that catchphrase isn’t going to work anymore. Going on strike isn’t going to work.
When Stalin ran up against the John Galts, he executed them all.
Who is Ragnar Danneskjold?
jonathan 24. Good post. It is all about feelings with the left. 34 Harry, yes at a critical time our leadership is lacking.
34 Harry
You discount Palin, and you may be correct. I remember pretty vividly that RR was discounted as a fool as well, and we see what happened there. I’m not comparing Palin with RR, just saying.
I’m not sure why everyone is so down on Palin. Maybe you can let me know your thoughts on that.
You’re right that the GOP doesn’t have much of a direction or identifiable brand right now. I’ve made the same point myself on other threads.
34 Harry
I’d take Palin in a heartbeat over McCain. Or Obama (who had significantly less experience than Palin on election day).
Newt’s probably the brightest, and certainly the most articulate, well-known Republican. He’s been out of government long enough now that his negatives are very old news. He’s one of the few actually willing to defend his views.
Most of the “name” Republicans are luke-warm, “lets not go to Hell quite as fast as the Democrats want, but it would be rude to actually dispute the destination” – what Thatcher would have called “wet”. That won’t get the job done.
Hatch is a good example of this in the Senate. Too busy being friends with Leahy et al to actually make the Conservative case in plain language. McCain had/has a severe case of this problem.
“It was the lying that proved his sincerity to a wider context, to a deeper set of allegiances, and to a larger agenda than the confining terms of reference of a mere political campaign.”
I suspect this is tied into the devotion some fans of Michael Moore still have for him even after the mountain of irrefutable evidence proving his lying, deception and hypocrisy.
I have found when Moore fans are confronted with his blatant dishonesty I always hear not a denial, but something along the lines of “he is trying illustrate a larger truth”.
WG
All of Obama’s supporters knew they would be paying substantially higher taxes. His Hollywood crowd knew it, they just wanted him to help screw over their audience whom they hate and fear. Women knew it, they just wanted to have Straight White Men screwed over, whom they hate and fear. Same with Blacks, Hispanics, Gays, etc.
Sometimes money is not everything, rather screwing over those you hate.
Obama will be fine as long as he continues to screw over Straight White Men, even if most of his female-non-White base is quite poorer, and screws over American allies, symbols, and power. For example, releasing with welfare and apologies and cash settlement, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. THAT would be very popular among his base, who would view it as a victory over “America” and “Straight White Men” (the two are really the same in Obama’s supporters minds). Why not?
Economic figures keep getting worse and worse, Cap and Trade promises to be a slam dunk in the Al Franken Decade, gutting the economy even more. Objectively, this would provoke a popularity around that of GWB or even far less. Yet, Obama’s base still loves him?
Because even being poor, they’ll have special status as protected classes in a government like Castro’s that runs everything, and punishes those they hate for existing. Plus, a dictatorship has it’s appeal, to those who hope to hold the whip for the tyrant. Particularly since Obama’s more a corporatist fascist than socialist, with huge racial hatreds (itself VERY attractive to women).
Lest anyone think I’m exaggerating, check out Emily Bazelon and her associates, writing in Salon, about the Ricci decision and how “racist” it was to “enable White privilege” by having merit based tests for firefighters. Her associates, all educated, Yale grad women, pile on with more of the same.
Collapse of marriage inevitably led to this sort of behavior. Look at Sweden, where boys in kindergarten are required to wear dresses one day a week. And according to Sandra Tsing Loh, “enlightened Swedish women prefer macho Muslim Men to marry.” [from her piece in the Atlantic.]
Obama is simply the messenger of demographics. That’s all. Everyone knew who he was the moment he walked on stage.
That Gibbsy soundbite is a wonderful contrast to the touchy feely vibe of this video.
Contrast Obama’s lies with the plight of G H W Bush’s vow of ‘no new taxes’. (Although I still believe Bush 41 would have been re-elected had it not been for Perot splitting the Party – Clinton never had a majority of popular votes)
Circumstance is everything and, if you have a well oiled propaganda machine like the leftist MSM; stealth, identity politics works.
If the now nationalized Chicago machine can be derailed, and I think they are already entrenched, it will be only through a combination of splitting the leftist’s vote with a 3rd-party candidate and another populist candidate like Reagan running for the GOP.
8. E. Nigma:
From each according to his gullability, to each according to his greed.
40. whiskey:
that reminds me of the parable about the Russian peasant who was offered by the genie a single wish, but was also told “whatever I give you, I will give twice as much to each of your neighbors. So the peasant asked the genie … “Make me blind in one eye.”
Rurik/45–or a similar one I was told by a Russian friend: The peasant’s cow died and The Voice granted him one wish.
“Let my neighbor’s cow die, too”, he said. My friend presented this as an insight into Russian psychology, sort of like the crabs pulling each other back into the bucket.
How about this Russian joke. Three men were trapped in a mine cave in, a Briton, an American and a Russian. As they resigned themselves to slow death they made themselves comfortable in the dark, when suddenly the American sat on metal object. It turned to be an ancient oil lamp. As he accidentally rubbed it, an awesome genie appeared and stood, shining, before the astounded trio. The genie boomed, “I normally grant my rescuer three wishes, but in this case, I will grant you three one wish each.”
The Briton found his voice first. “Transport me to London with 500 million pounds in my bank account!”
“Done!” the genie boomed. There was a flash and the Briton was teleported to London.
The American followed suit. “A billion dollars and take me to LA!”
“Granted!” said the genie. The American vanished in a flash.
The Russian was more considered. He thought for a long time before what really wanted finally hit him.
“Genie, give me three bottles of vodka and my friends back!”
I think a posteriori has quite a different meaning in the O regime, and remember: messiahs of this type all promise and deliver Deliverance, if ya’know wud uh mean
The russian jokes are funny but they’re not reeally jokes –they’re parables, and there’s a reason they’re popping into people’s heads these days. There’s only a few human archetypes after all.
David Horowitz wrote a whole book on why the voters believe it. It’s called The Art of Political War and it doesn’t seem that any Republicans in power ever read it.
pajamasemdia.com, how do you do it?
pajamasmedia.com, how do you do if?
http://geniallylowrider.blogspot.com/2010/03/lowrider-vilifications-nerveless.html
http://aliginwardness.blogspot.com/
http://elvesdoggedness.blogspot.com/2010/03/generousness-elves.html