Encouraging voters to blame their anxieties, fears and financial stress on the rich is one of progressive movement’s oldest and crudest campaign themes.

Obama can probably count on more enthusiasm from his emotion-driven base if he succeeds with millionaire tax increases.  But a review of history does not lead to the conclusion that government would collect more tax revenue or that non-millionaires who need jobs would be better off.  In fact, the opposite is more likely.

The chart above tracks both the effective tax rate and total tax revenue from millionaires who, like most of us pay taxes at different rates, for different categories of income.  One’s effective tax rate is the total dollar amount of tax paid (at various rates) divided by adjusted gross income.

The chart shows that tax revenue was falling before, and then increased dramatically after the Bush tax rates were enacted in 2003.   As the red line shows, the average, effective tax rate paid by all millionaires went down because the Bush tax cuts of 2003:

• lowered the top tax bracket rate for “ordinary income” (salaries and business profits) from 39.6% to 35%
• Lowered the top rate for capital gains from 20% to 15%
• Lowered the top rate for stock dividends from 39.6 to 15%.

But the rest of the story, as the above chart shows, is that the government collected more, not less tax revenue from taxpayers with million-dollar-plus incomes.

The “Bush tax cuts” were enacted in 2003 and are still in effect.  Revenue from millionaires grew an astonishing 128% from 2002 to 2007.  In 2007 more tax revenue was collected from millionaires than any previous year ever.

Then the recession hit and from 2007 to 2009 the number of taxpayers with incomes over $1 million dropped by 40%.   Revenue from millionaires fell by 43% but was still more than had been collected in 2002, the year before the current tax rates were enacted.

So what do Obama and his progressive friends want?  Shouldn’t they want to maximize tax revenue to the government to pay for all their various programs?  Shouldn’t they embrace the current tax rates as – to use one of their favorite words for government policy – “smart”?

Revenue from millionaires went up rather than down after the tax rates were lowered because:

• The capital gains tax is voluntary.  It comes due only when an asset that has appreciated in value is sold.  Obviously, people are more likely to sell when the tax is lower.
• Stock dividends are the investors’ share of corporate profits remaining after payment of corporate income tax which is usually 35%.  The investor’s individual tax is in addition to the 35%.  When the individual tax rate on dividends was higher companies paid smaller dividends or no dividend at all because investors wanted to avoid taxation and preferred that profits to be deployed in ways that might enhance the market value of the stock.  After the individual rate was reduced investors wanted stocks that paid dividends and companies responded by paying more to attract those investors.  Thus, the government is now collecting taxes on dividend income that did not exist when tax rates were higher and would disappear if the rates went back up.

In addition to generating more revenue to the government, lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains also benefit the economy in general and those who seek jobs in particular:

• When people sell an asset they look for new investments for the funds they receive, including business start-ups and business expansions that generate jobs.  If the capital gains tax rate is higher they are less likely to sell and those new start-ups are less likely to come into existence.
• When investors receive dividends they seek new investment opportunities for those funds, including job creating business start-ups and expansions.

By the way, taxpayers in all brackets pay lower rates on capital gains and dividends than they do on ordinary income.  In fact capital gains are tax free for taxpayers whose ordinary income rate is 15%, which would include most families who earn less than about $80,000, and some who earn even more.

Finally, the chart below tracks jobs and millionaire tax rates.  In 2007 there were more jobs than ever before at the same time millionaire tax rates reached their lowest.

As we disclosed in our previous post, fully 76% of millionaires are owners of small businesses. Increasing their taxes leaves them with less to invest in job creation.  History shows the most likely results of a surtax on millionaires will be less tax revenue and fewer jobs.  So why would Obama and the Democrats bet their futures on campaigning for such increases? We can only assume their pollsters tell him they’ll will win more votes by appealing to envy and resentment than by revealing the truth.

As in the sixties, the slovenly protesters are perceived to be Democratic/liberal/progressive followers.  Their only coherent position, opposition to “the top 1%” is consistent with Democrats’ current campaign themes and legislative agenda.

President Obama, Vice President Biden and Minority Leader Pelosi have all made supportive comments to reinforce the perception that they are united with the protesters.  Thus, disgusted voters will will link the Occupy Wall Street hordes with Democrats even though the protestors have voiced complaints against recent policies and actions of Obama and the Democrats.

In 1968 similar mobs poisoned the Democrats’ Presidential nominating process first by driving incumbent President Johnson to retire instead of seeking a second term and then with violent demonstrations all across the nation.  The ugliness and violence peaked at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, where demonstrators fought with cops who worked for Mayor Daily and the Democratic machine.  Here’s a video.

The result: Republican Richard Nixon won the Presidency by a 110 electoral vote margin even though Conservatives didn’t like him, most voters didn’t trust him, and a third party candidate won most of the South.

Any of the current Republican contenders would be more appealing to independent voters in 2012 than the mercurial Nixon was in 1968.   It doesn’t seem likely that Occupy Wall Street will persuade independents to reject the Republican nominee in favor of Obama.  Occupy’s most likely accomplishment will be to discourage and demoralize Obama’s liberal base and further alienate independents who have already begun to abandon him, even though they don’t know who the Republican nominee will be.

As the chart shows, the debt crisis is driven by spending and since Republicans were in control of Congress from 2001 through 2006 and Democrats were in control after that, neither party is blameless.

But the current Republican party – including nearly 100 Representatives who were not in the House during the wild spending spree – now gets it.  The GOP House has passed a budget with genuine, substantial spending cuts.  They demand that the President and the Democratic Senate agree to $2 Trillion in spending cuts in exchange for a $2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling.

However President Obama and the Democrats who control the Senate have simply ignored the House passed budget and will not agree to any spending cuts unless “the rich” including the small businesses most likely to hire new employees get hit with a tax hike, in the midst of this severe recession.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner recently answered questions at a House Small Business Committee hearing on the budget.  Here are some excerpts:

Question from Rep. Renee Ellmers (R.-N.C.): “You support raising taxes on those who make $200,000 or more…Those ARE our business owners.”

Secretary Geithner: “They’re three percent of your business owners.”

We’re disappointed to note that Geithner apparently does not visit Liberty Works, because we’ve been over this ground before.

It’s true that only a small portion of the total of all small business owners are in the over $200,000 bracket.  But that’s an irrelevant statistic.

Every taxpayer who engages in a business activity instead of or in addition to a job must submit small business tax forms and is thus counted as a “small businesses.”  This includes tens of millions of one or two person or part time businesses who will never create jobs.

The businesses that do create jobs are the “larger” small businesses that generate more revenue and more taxable profits. These are the businesses in the over-$200,000 tax bracket.  To determine if increasing the top tax bracket rates will affect a significant number of job creating small businesses the relevant questions are:

• How many small businesses are there in the over $200,000 bracket?
• What portion of all small business income is earned by those in over $200,000 bracket?

Fortunately, the IRS publishes data to answer these questions.  As the charts show more than two million taxpayers who earned over $200,000 were small business owners, and they earned 63% of all small business profits.

The Obama tax increase directly targets the very businesses that normally create most of the new jobs in America.  These businesses create jobs primarily by reinvesting after tax profits.  Increasing their tax burden will directly result in fewer jobs.

Geithner continued: It’s important to recognize why we’re doing this.  Deficits are 10% of GDP, higher than any time in the post war period. (65 years since the end of World War II.) We’re not doing it because we want to do it.  We’re doing it because if we don’t I have to go out and borrow a Trillion dollars over the next ten years to fiance those tax benefits…

This is typical political deception.  Geithner asserts that leaving the existing tax bracket rates in place will result in less tax revenue than if tax bracket rates are increased.  But anyone who reviews the history of tax rates and revenue knows it’s not at all certain that increasing tax rates on small businesses now will result in more tax revenue to the government.

Geithner says he’ll have to borrow an extra $1 trillion over ten years.  So even if he’s right, hundreds of thousands or perhaps even millions of people will remain unemployed so that tax revenue can increase by $100 billion per year, or about 3% of this year’s spending.

Geithner concluded: “…and if we were to cut spending by that magnitude we’d be putting a huge additional burden on the economy, probably greater economic impact than that modest change in revenues.”

So taking $100 billion from the private sector to fund government priorities is “modest.”  But allowing private sector businesses and individuals to spend, save or invest their own money as they see fit would be “a huge additional burden on the economy”?  This is nothing but Keynesian flimflam.

The table shows some relevant historical numbers, comparing 2011 with 2007:

Just four years ago, in 2007, there were 6.7 million more jobs while the government spent 29% less than it will spend this year.

Yet in the face of these numbers Geithner wants you to believe that a 3% spending cut will somehow be worse for job growth and prosperity than a major tax increase on employers!

This article was published on June 22 and revised on June 23 in response to questions, objections and advice received via email and Twitter.

It’s human nature to seek one or two silver bullet reforms that would miraculously ignite prosperity.  Thus the appeal of the Obama “stimulus” that was enacted two years ago on the promise that it would in the President’s own words, “immediately jump start job creation and long term growth.”

But America’s economic decline has been “death by a thousand cuts,” the predictable, cumulative effect of layers of anti-liberty, anti-business taxes and regulations, enacted over several decades and accelerated during the Obama Administration.   If we are to restore our economy we must do the tedious work of identifying for Congressional action each of government’s tax and regulatory barriers to prosperity, one at a time.  This article is about one such barrier.

Last month the Republicans published their plan to create jobs, a document with several sound policy proposals whose effect would be to lower government imposed barriers to capital formation, business expansion and job creation.  To understand one of those proposals consider two car companies:

The German company Diamler manufactures Mercedes Benz cars at a plant in Alabama and sells them in the US.  Diamler pays corporate income tax to the US Government on profits generated here from making and selling cars.

General Motors manufactures and sells it’s Opel brand of cars in Germany.  GM pays corporate income tax to the German government on profits generated there.

So far both companies are treated the same way, and each government has a source of tax revenue.  But the equal treatment ends when profits are brought home.

Germany, and virtually every other first world nation, recognizes that profits generated in a foreign country have already been taxed and welcomes those profits back, to be invested at home without additional tax burden.  But the American corporate tax code requires GM and other corporations that operate internationally, such as Apple, Microsoft and Google, to pay US corporate income tax on profits that are brought home or “repatriated,” even though those profits were already taxed by a foreign government.

This stupid tax policy is yet another example of the political establishment’s ignorance of economic incentives and disincentives and the progressive movement’s irrational prejudice against all corporations.

The result is profits that could be brought home and invested in America instead pile up in foreign jurisdictions waiting for foreign investment opportunities.

The Republican proposal would permit:

…companies to bring back their overseas profits without being subject to double taxation so they can invest in our economy.

Critics of the Republican proposal cite the “repatriation holiday” enacted by Congress in 2005.  Companies were allowed to bring home overseas profits and pay a reduced tax rate of 5.25%.  More than $300 billion dollars were repatriated to the US.

But a couple of studies concluded that most of this money was allocated in ways other than direct, immediately observable, job creation by those companies.  Instead some of it was distributed as dividends to shareholders and some used to financially strengthen the companies by buying back stock to reduce the number of shares outstanding.

But not tracking the ultimate destination of dividend or share buyback cash, ignores one of the positive results of liberty and free markets, that profits investors earn from older, established companies becomes the capital that funds newer business opportunities.

The repatriation holiday was a 12 month period during 2005 and 2006.  It turns out that the year ending March, 2006 was the best 12 months of job growth of the entire decade, with 2.7 million new private sector jobs created, dropping the unemployment rate to 4.7%.  Compare that record with the most recent twelve months when 1.7 million private sector jobs were created.  The current unemployment rate is 9.1%.

While this employment growth was probably not all a direct result of repatriation the statistics do offset data offered by others to conclude that it was “bad” or “wrong” to allow companies to bring their profits home at less than full double taxation.

Some in Congress are calling for another “holiday” period when profits can be repatriated at a reduced tax rate.  However this strategy is a perverse incentive for companies to continuously accumulate profits abroad and wait for the next holiday.  The Republican proposal is to provide an incentive to invest in America by permanently changing the tax code to permit repatriation at any time with no tax punishment at all.  Business decision makers are long term thinkers and respond more favorably to long term policy than temporary gimmicks.

Democrats argue that this GOP proposal is “bad” because it won’t help small businesses who have no foreign profits.  But as we said at the top of this article, the proposal to remove double taxation of foreign profits is not offered as a cure-all for every business.  It’s one of many legislative actions that are necessary to restore prosperity, full employment and traditional American optimism.

Indeed there are plenty of actions that must also be taken specifically to lift the governmental burden on small business. But so far the President and Congress refuse to consider them.

By some estimates there are more than a Trillion dollars of corporate profits in foreign jurisdictions that could come back to America.  Even if those dollars come home free of corporate income tax they will still generate tax revenue when they are reinvested or distributed to share holders.

The question is should companies be allowed to repatriate foreign profits without double taxation.  If the goal is to help create jobs and prosperity the obvious answer is yes.  Even if the only goal is to maximize tax revenue the answer is still yes, since the status quo generates zero revenue.

On february 20 The Republican House of Representatives passed a bill that would cut a mere $61 Billion from the Obama’s $3.5 Trillion spending plan for 2011. My first reaction was disappointment after such big talk during the campaign.  

I was considering a scornful critique of the GOP when the Democrats distracted me with hysterical language that was even more out of touch with reality than the the GOP’s timorous spending cuts.  Senator John Kerry was typical.  Appearing on Face the Nation he bellowed:

I don’t believe what we have from the House is a serious economic plan. I think it’s a ideological extremist reckless statement. If– if that were to be in fact, put in place, it would– it would contribute to the reversal of our recovery. It might even destroy our recovery. It will certainly deny us the competitiveness that we need to go– to– to move with China, India and other countries into the future. I think it’s a very dangerous plan.

On the floor of the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called the trifling cuts mean-spirited and actually defended an annual appropriation for the “Cowboy Poetry Festival” in his home state of Nevada.

President Obama and Senate Democrats placed a counter offer on the table: $6 billion in cuts, a number so small it must have been meant as a joke.

To reduce the government’s fiscal position to more easily grasped numbers imagine a family with an income of $6,000 per month after taxes.  Imagine that by continuously borrowing they have managed to spend

$10,000 every month for years.  Finally Mom & Dad begin to think maybe they should cut back a little.

Mom suggests they cut one of dinners the family eats in fine restaurants each month, saving about $160 or 1.6% of their spending, as the Republicans proposed.  They would still be borrowing $3,840 every month.

But Dad says that’s just too much to handle right now.  He would rather commit to one less family outing to the ice cream store each month, saving $20 or 0.2% as the Democrats propose.

Congress is no less absurd and irresponsible than this family.  It’s time for mass emailing.

Tens of thousands of people showed up at town halls across the country carrying portions of HR3200 on clipboards as they demanded clear answers to specific questions.  It became obvious from the reactions of stupefied Senators and Congressmen that they had not read the health care legislation they came home to defend.

Today, the Senate Commerce Committee continues working toward the goal of completing and then voting on yet another version of ObamaCare.  This bill, which would substantially change health insurance and access to medical services for every American was largely written by one man, Senator Baucus.

Yesterday Republican members of the committee offered a simple, modest Amendment: Post the final version of the bill online for a token 72 hours in advance of the committee vote.

Of course nobody could digest and consider all the consequences of a thousand plus pages of dense and arcane legalese in only 72 hours.  Possibly, 72 days would be sufficient.

But even 72 hours was too much for Committee Democrats who defeated the amendment.  So the bill will not be posted online before voting.  If the precedent set by the massive “stimulus” spending bill continues, the legislation won’t even be printed in its final form for committee members to read before they vote.

Establishment politicians do not want the voters watching via the Internet as they continue the relentless march toward authoritarian government, continuously diminishing individual rights and autonomy.  The Democrats prefer doing business Washington’s old way:  Snow the poor dumb folks at home with a lot of promises but don’t let them see what the fine print.  They’ll learn gradually, as the new laws and regulations roll out and are enforced by the bureaucracy.

If constituents object blame the bureaucrats, and, if he’s a Republican, the President.

For weeks Obama Administration officials have warned that unemployment would rise from present levels.  A lot.  Yesterday Press Secretary Robert Gibbs looked grim as he told reporters he expected today’s employment report from the Labor Dept. to show “several hundred thousand jobs lost” and a higher unemployment rate for July – higher than June’s 9.5% rate.

But this morning’s report shows the July unemployment rate actually came down a tick to 9.4%.   The survey of employers showed a net loss of 247,000 jobs in July, compared to 443,000 in June and 303,000 in May.  Today Gibbs tried to claim success, saying the employment statistics were “more evidence that we have pulled back from the edge of a depression.”

President Obama appeared briefly to assert that these unemployment data are “additional signs that the worst may be behind us.”

Apparently, the White House knew yesterday what today’s report would look like and worked to lower expectations so they could plausibly spin horrible data as a success of sorts.  Most of the media are trying to help, with sparkling speculation about an end to the recession, and better times ahead.

Recently, Obama, his various spokesmen and his media supporters donned their Econ professor hats to tutor us from history that re-employment has always been a “lagging indicator” as recessions end and recoveries begin.   True enough. But that’s not what they said in January and February.  Back then, when they were furiously selling the stimulus, they said spending $787 Billion in borrowed funds would make this recession different, that job losses would halt, and millions of new jobs would be created – immediately.

We may be seeing a few of the typical early indicators of an end to a recession, including a rising stock market.  If so, employment will improve eventually, as it always has, months or years, later.  When employers finally start rehiring, Obama will take  credit, claiming his stimulus “worked” and his critics were wrong.  Until then, administration officials will remind us that employment is a lagging indicator.

Let us hope Obama doesn’t succeed in piling the lead weights of government health care, cap-and-trade, and massive deficits on the faltering economy.   The downside if he does fail to enact his agenda?  The economy and employment may recover enough to persuade voters not to punish the Democrats in the next election, so they keep their majority giving Obama another chance to enact his noxious agenda.   Heads he wins, tails we lose.

.

An excerpt from Brady’s remarks today:

Why should any patient be forced to give control of their health care over to this Faustian pit of Washington bureaucracy?  This government takeover has only one guaranteed result: to tell Americans what doctors you can see, what treatments you deserve and what medicines you can have.

The chart identifies at least 31 new federal programs, agencies, commissions and mandates that are included in the legislation House Democrats have written to enable a government takeover of health care in America.  These new bureaucracies, agencies, organizations and programs will all be put directly between the patient and his/her medical services.

The media have been working overtime to publish specious allegations and personal attacks against Governor Palin, her daughter, her husband, her Pastor and her local church.

The Chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party Carolyn Fowler, wife of Representative Don Fowler, said today that Governor Palin’s…

…primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.

Barack Obama appeared on the Letterman show to explain, yet again, what he meant by the lipstick on a pig remark.  He said criticism of his remark was just a sign of a “silly season in politics.”  But he can’t seem to shrug off the silliness and focus on the serious.  He told Letterman:

“Keep in mind, technically, had I meant it this way, [Palin] would be the lipstick. The failed policies of John McCain would be the pig, just following the logic of this illogical situation.”

About the time Senator Obama was taping his appearance on the Letterman show Rep. Steve Cohen (Democrat, Tennessee) was holding forth on the floor of the House of Representatives, claiming that Jesus was a community organizer like Obama, while Pontius Pilate the appointed Roman Satrap who believed Jesus was innocent of any crime but sentenced him to death anyway was, like Sarah Palin, “a governor.”  (Video below.)

Earlier, at a rally in New Hampshire, Vice Presidential Nominee Joe Biden, whose media coverage has completely dried up since Sarah Palin emerged opined that he might not have been the best VP candidate for the party.

Hillary Clinton is as qualified or more qualified than I am to be Vice President of the United States of America…she’s easily qualified to be vice president and quite frankly, may have been a better pick than me.

Perhaps Biden, who’s been in politics longer than almost anyone, has determined the Obama campaign is sinking.  Perhaps he’d rather not spend the next 55 days campaigning for a lost cause.  Perhaps he’d rather go back to the Senate and his daily pilgrimage on the taxpayer subsidized Amtrak.   Let Hillary go down with the Obama ship.

But we couldn’t let this one go by.

.

The alarming development is that even though there are roughly a thousand limousines available for hire in the DNC Convention city of Denver, theres a shortage for convention week. Distressed delegates have to compete with each other, as they urgently pursue available limos to reserve.

Colorado State Government has agreed to help out during the emergency by temporarily waiving the usual licensing requirements for limos from other states.

These are Al Gore’s acolytes in the Temple of The Global Warming Cult, who constantly hector us with dire predictions of imminent climate calamity caused by our SUVs, RVs, boats and lawnmowers. These are the folks who have, for decades, politically blocked new drilling for oil in America because – they always said – we should convert to “alternative” sources, that aren’t yet viable or available.

America uses too much oil and looks too opulent and the world isn’t going to put up with us much longer, Senator Obama warned, ominously, last month.

Apparently a lot of the delegates believe their tedious chanting on behalf of “saving the planet” entitles them to a conspicuous arrival presentation in chauffeured, gas-guzzling magnificence.

The august delegates are not about to suffer the indignity of being seen by their peers crammed into the kind of elfin coupe they demand the rest of us drive.

to repeal it’s bans against drilling for oil on

American territory and in American waters.

.

From the Democrat leaders in the House and Senate came the usual insipid response that “Bush policies” caused high gas prices. As always, they were unable to identify or describe the bad “policies” or explain cause-effect connections between policies and gas prices.

On the campaign trail Barack Obama announced that YOU could save more oil than the oil companies can produce if allowed to drill more. How? Inflate your tires and get a tuneup! Here’s the video!

In reality, $4 gas and massive dependence on imported oil result from a “policy” enacted into law by Congress twenty years ago, that bans new exploration and drilling for oil almost anywhere on US soil or in US waters. Also banned, is extracting oil from shale, even though America has the world’s largest shale oil deposit. The Bush Administration produced an energy report in April, 2001 that called for lifting some of the bans but the Democrats condemned it as “written by big oil” and refused to consider it.

So, the bans stayed in place and now, here we are, once again, enduring the tediously familiar Washington dance: finger-pointing, incoherent debate and stonewalling against resolution of a crisis.

The anti-drilling politicians cloud the issue with the misplaced use of “we-ours-us.” They talk about how “we” must not drill for oil because “we” must instead use “our” resources to invest in alternative energy sources.

Politicians introduce ambiguity, confusion, and deception, when they use the we-ours-us terms to describe decisions that, in a society built on the principles of individual liberty, should be private and not under government control. The misplaced use of we-our-us leads, over time, to a sort of numbed popular acceptance of the notion that nothing can happen unless government authorities first do the thinking and then provide official blessings and release funds.

The we-our-us rhetorical device obscures the truth: if permitted to drill, the oil companies will invest their own, not “our” or government’s resources into growing their own business – and create tens of thousands of new American jobs along the way. It isn’t necessary for “us” – meaning politicians and regulators in Washington – to choose between investment in drilling and investment in alternatives.

At the same time oil companies, if permitted, invest their resources to produce more oil, other companies are investing and will continue to invest their own resources in research and development of oil-alternatives and fuel saving technologies. General Motors has invested heavily in hydrogen fuel cell powered cars, including buying a stake in fuel cell researcher Quantum Technologies. At this moment a fleet of GM fuel cell cars is undergoing long term testing by “regular people” in New York, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles. Honda has also developed fuel cell prototypes and has put a test fleet on the streets of Los Angeles.

Other companies are researching wind, solar and other exotic alternatives. There is no reason for the big “we,” meaning politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, to decide which research should or should not be conducted, or to pick research projects to fund, or to subsidize some forms of energy and penalize others. Politicians and regulators have no track record that would demonstrate them qualified to pick winners and losers in advance, before all research and development has been completed.

The best thing for government to do is remove the barriers and get out of the way. Government should allow individuals, groups and companies to do which ideas are most promising and do as little or as much research and development as they wish, without any political interference. Government should allow oil companies to produce as much oil as they can sell.

America would not be in this critically urgent situation if the activists and lobbying groups – who always use the we-our-us cloud to confuse and deceive us – had not persuaded Congress to overstep its Constitutional authority, banning production of oil and natural gas and nuclear power and thus creating a shortage energy and high priced gasoline.

The politicians should solve the energy crisis they created in Washington by stepping back, removing politically motivated barriers, and allowing liberty to work!

While the American soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen of 1945 lacked many of the technological advantages today’s troops have, they did have one major advantage that has been denied the courageous men and women serving in Iraq: A united Congress, committed to nothing less than total victory.

In 1944 no US Senator announced to the world – including the enemy – that the war was lost, as Majority Leader Harry Reid did last year, just as US troops arrived in Iraq to launch the spectacularly successful, counter-insurgency operation known as The Surge. There was a Presidential election campaign in 1944. But there was no candidate running on a promise to abandon the effort, throw away all the hard won gains, and retreat, as Barack Obama now promises, if he is elected.

It’s hard to imagine anything more disastrous than what Barack Obama will do to the volunteer military if he is elected and actually goes through with his promise to abandon Iraq to Al Qaeda and the other assorted thugs, insurgents, and Iranian-backed militias, who have largely been defeated and subdued by this magnificent counter-insurgency operation.

It has been over a year since the media bothered to report reenlistment rates. Why? Because reenlistments have been high, and all branches of the military have met or exceeded their quotas. The American media bury anything that could be interpreted as good news associated in any way with Iraq.

What would happen to the reenlistment rate if hundreds of thousands of men and women who have served in Iraq were given the message that the blood and sweat and years of their lives they poured into that effort were for nothing? Why would that happen? Because five years ago, when he was an obscure State Senator, would-be President Obama opposed the decision to liberate Iraq from Saddam and his maniacal sons.

Senator Obama has based his entire campaign on the claim that his opposition to liberating Iraq and birthing a consensual government in the heart of the Middle East is all the proof he needs to demonstrate that his “judgment” is superior to that of his adversaries. Thus, if the men and women of the US military ultimately succeed in transforming Iraq into a peaceful democracy and US ally, their accomplishment would cast doubt on his so-called “judgment” and injure his fragile ego.