I should have video up soon of the candidates' debate for Virginia's Second Congressional District, which I moderated a few weeks ago. In the meantime, it looks like I can make a preliminary announcement for the next Tea Party Debates event: a forum for congressional candidates from across New Jersey, which is scheduled for the evening of Monday, May 17, in Toms River, New Jersey. It's on the Atlantic coast, pretty much equidistant from Philadelphia and New York. I'll post more details as everything gets firmed up. Thanks to New Jersey tea party organizer (and TIA Daily reader) Mark Kalinowski for working to set this up.
This was originally intended to be a debate among the Republican candidates from New Jersey's 3rd district, but we cancelled that plan as some of those candidates began to withdraw. This seems to be the pattern for Republican congressional races: you tend to get either eight candidates, or one. In districts with a clearly vulnerable Democratic incumbent, anyone with political ambitions decides that this is his year, so you get a field flooded with candidates (as in Virginia's 2nd and 5th). But in districts where the race is more difficult, the Republican Party can generally recruit only one strong candidate who is willing to risk his time and money in the hope that maybe this will be the year for an upset.
That's why we've switched to a forum for candidates from all of New Jersey's districts, because in most of these races, there is only one Republican running. A forum will still serve the purposes of the Tea Party Debates. First, it will give tea party voters a chance to determine whether the Republican challenger is worth supporting and campaigning for. Second, it will give us a chance to get the candidates on record making public commitments to the key elements of a pro-free-market, limited-government agenda.
This is another opportunity at which I want to ask my readers to support these efforts. The New Jersey forum won't require much money, at least on my end, but I am still making efforts to host debates in other states and districts, and I have many other plans that go far beyond the primaries.
I have sporadically asked for donations in the past year, but the passage of the health care bill has prompted me to get more serious about building a larger, stronger institutional base for intellectual activism. When I originally asked for your support last August, it was as a temporary emergency, on the premise that six or eight weeks of intensive advocacy could stop the Obama agenda. But now we have to settle in for the long cultural/political war that's going to be required for the unprecedented task of beginning to roll back a massive expansion of government. Instead of six to eight weeks, it's going to take three to six years—and probably longer.
Let me put it this way: our current state is still an emergency, but it's no longer a temporary emergency. It is a long-term state of crisis, and that greatly increases the scope of the task. It's going to require more time and an organization on a bigger scale than we anticipated. The scope of the challenge is big enough to absorb as much effort—and as much money—as we can muster, but the scope of the opportunity is also unprecedented. There are, in fact, more opportunities than TIA can handle if it remains what it has been, up to now: essentially, a one-man operation. We need more manpower and support. And we need to get out to a larger audience—much larger—than we can with just a subscription-based newsletter.
I'll have more to say soon on what that our plans are and what is required to get there, but any support you can offer right now—go here—will make a huge difference, providing the seed capital we need to get started on the task.
Now for the news—which is very much related to everything I've just said.
It is becoming clear what President Obama and his supporters mean when they have talked about pursuing a "transformational" agenda. Dick Morris—who was involved in making sure Bill Clinton's agenda was pretty much non-transformational, explains the role of the Value Added Tax.
Obama has let it be known that the VAT is "on the table" as he casts about for taxes to lock in his gigantic levels of federal spending.When Obama took office, federal, state and local spending accounted for 30% of GDP. Now it is up to 35% and, when health care is fully implemented, it will rise to above 40%. But taxes are still below 30%. The difference is the deficit, now grown to 10% of our GDP.
If our government is to continue spending 40% of our GDP, we will morph into the European model of a socialist democracy. But if we can roll the spending back to 30%, while holding taxes level, we will retain our free market system….
Now Obama proposes the ultimate step to convert us into a European nation—the VAT.
The VAT (value added tax) is levied at each stage of a commercial transaction. So the raw material seller charges the manufacturer who then adds a new tax onto the price when he sells his finished product to a retailer who then adds on a new levy when he sells it to a customer.
And, in Europe, as Obama proposes in the US, the VAT does not replace the income tax, it just supplements it.
The VAT is an attempt to create a permanently expanded level of taxation meant to support permanently expanded government spending and a permanently expanded welfare state.
Morris also points to a key way in which conservatives have unwittingly emboldened Obama.
When conservatives like Neal Boortz proposed the "Fair Tax" (a levy on consumption not on income), we should have known that the Obama left would seize on the proposal not as Boortz intended it to be, a replacement for the income tax, but as an addition to it!
There's the potential problem for Republicans. Their two top priorities are to repeal ObamaCare and block a national sales tax, the VAT. But they've got one major presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, who sponsored the equivalent of ObamaCare in Massachusetts. And many conservatives have spent the past few years singing the praises of a national sales tax, the "Fair Tax."
And it's not just higher government taxes and spending that Obama wants to make permanent. He also wants to permanently establish the government's unlimited power to control the financial markets. That's the essence of the financial "reform" currently being pushed through: an attempt to take the "temporary" powers claimed under the TARP bailout and make them permanent. Call it PermaTARP.
House Minority Leader John Boehner explains what the Dodd bill does:
President Obama talks a big game when it comes to Wall Street, but his newest job-killing initiative would provide the nation's largest financial firms with permanent bailouts ordered and overseen by unelected federal bureaucrats.Under his proposal, the largest Wall Street firms would become eligible for special treatment, including taxpayer-funded resources unavailable to smaller financial firms. These include exclusive access to a pre-existing bailout fund, a Treasury-backed line of credit and a government guarantee for any debt….
Under the Democrats' plan, a new "Financial Stability Oversight Council" made up of unelected federal bureaucrats—including representatives from the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the CFTC, the FDIC and the SEC—would have absolute power to seize any company and do whatever it wants with it….
The commissioner of the SEC has warned that "there are no clear limits on the degree of government intervention that could be expected."
So it's not just a European-style welfare state that Obama would make permanent. It's the whole banana republic style of his administration, the constant exercise of unlimited and arbitrary power over the economy by the chief executive.
That's the "transformation" Obama has in store for us: a grotesque metamorphosis from a nation based on individual rights into just another corrupt socialist state.
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