Victor David Hanson's 5 Modest Recommendations For PSBO

Victor David Hanson maintains in his article The Great Divider just that -- PSBO is quite not the great "uniter" just the opposite actually. He writes:

"...in his nascent career in the Senate, he had already compiled the most
partisan record of any Democratic Senator. He had attended religiously one of
the most racially divisive and extremist churches in the country. His Chicago
friends were not moderates. His campaigns for state legislature, the House and
the Senate were hard-ball, no-prisoner affairs of personal destruction, even by
Chicago standards. Campaign references to reparations, gun- and bible-clingers,
and Rev. Wright’s wisdom were not words of healing.
In short, while the rhetoric was often inspirational, I found no real reason then—or now—to believe that Barack Obama wishes to be a uniter. And nothing in his first five weeks ofgovernance has disabused me of that first tough impression."

He offers 5 recommendations that PSBO would do well to adopt if he is really interested in bring the country together

1. Forget Talk Radio-"...both you and your staff have zeroed in on Rush Limbaugh by name. But Presidential candidates and elected Presidents must seem above the fray, and not descend into tit-for-tat with media celebrities. There is a reason why even your closest associates have ceased calling you Barack and now quite properly address you as “Mr. President”—and it is not due to your persistence in demonizing talk radio."

2. Forget George Bush-"We got the message already that he is near satanic, you angelic....in your first address to the nation, you went out swinging: “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” But President Bush never set up such a Manichean either/or situation, as you yourself must accept, when you embraced his protocols on FISA, the Patriotic Act, the Bush-Petraeus Iraq withdrawal plan, and kept rendition, and so far have not quite closed Guantanamo.to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. . .Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.”

But Mr. President, deficits arose from out-of-control spending, inasmuch as the Bush tax cuts resulted in increased revenue. It is fair to fault the past eight years of profligate spending, but when you engage in such demagoguery, the American people can detect your subtext: “I won’t criticize Bush’s spending because I found it not enough and will trump it; I will criticize his tax cuts, since I want to make the wealthier pay for my even greater borrowing.”

Cutting taxes on everyone who pays them is not transferring wealth, unless you believe that one’s own income belongs to the government in the first place. Under Bush, nearly 50% of the tax filers for the first time paid no income tax at all—hardly a transfer of wealth.

As far as “gutting” regulations go, I don’t think you wish to go there—given the careers of Franklin Rains, a disgraced Jim Johnson (of your recent hire), Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd, who not only really did gut regulations that were at the center of the financial meltdown, but profited from such complicit laxity.

3.Drop the messianic style- "The campaign is over. The Victory Column and Parthenon facades belong to last summer. Remember, it’s hard finding elites to serve in government that are not tainted. You yourself discovered that depressing fact when you nominated tax-dodgers and lobbyists to your own cabinet. Not only did you have far more trouble on such ethical fronts than did Bush in his first month of nominations, but you suffered the additional wage of hypocrisy after adopting the prophetic rhetoric about your own virtue. 2012 will come soon enough without vero possumus at every turn."

4. Enough of the evil “rich” - "We’ve heard now about the proverbial jets, parties, and ‘they want us to eat cake’ rhetoric that is approaching the sloganeering of the French Revolution. No one likes a Bernie Madoff, or supports AIG and Citicorp execs wanting federal subsidies to cover their lavish lifestyles.

But a little humility is in order: the problem is not just Richard Fuld at a bankrupt Lehman Brothers, but also Clintonites like Robert Rubin at Citicorp, and liberals at Freddie and Fannie who took millions while destroying the financial integrity of hallowed institutions.

You are our President; so, please, begin seeing greed as an equal opportunity vice that infects liberal and conservatives alike—and anyone else with all too human frailties. If anything, the liberal egalitarian suffers the additional wage of hypocrisy for engaging in Rangelesque schemes or Robert Rubin ‘me-first’ bonuses—in the same manner conservatives do when caught with women or drugs after boasting of the need for old-time morality."

5. Stop the dissimulation. "Your plan might work for a while given the incineration of trillions in stock and home equity and the need for replacement cash, but its revenue-raising component is not just aimed at the miniscule number of “rich”, which you imply to the American people are flying the skies of America in private jets while being unpatriotic in avoiding taxes and violating regulations.

In fact, for your plan to succeed, you must go after the upper, upper middle-class, those making between $250,000 and $600,000 who are restaurant owners, home builders, labor contactors, architects, surgeons, engineers, hospital executives, college administrators, Ivy-League law professors, and many dentists.

These households are wealthy, yes; but they don’t own or even fly on $50 million private jets or host private Super Bowl parties. Their income is all reported, and with such good salaries come high insurance and, in the case of business, constant reinvestment and expensive inventories. They are not greedy, but the bulwark of the United States’ productive classes who in aggregate pay over 40% of the collective income taxes, and provide most of the jobs in the country. Under your plan many in these high-tax states will pay nearly 70% of their incomes in FICA, Medicare, federal income, and state income taxes. Why gratuitously mislead the American people that those for whom you will lift FICA ceilings or up their IRS bites to 40% are in any way synonymous with the super-rich? Remember the very, very wealthy voted overwhelmingly in your favor precisely because their riches gave them immunity from high taxes, and in many cases they were far removed from the everyday risk and worry of owning a hardware store or trying to keep together a family-owned construction firm. George Clooney is a world away from a paving contractor, just as making $400,000 a year on call 24/7 is not quite making $40 million investing or $2 million for a cameo."

So please no more intellectual dishonesty, Mr. President. Those in great numbers who will pay your higher taxes are not really the rarer Warren Buffets, Bill Gateses, Diane Feinsteins, Teresa Heinz Kerrys, Sean Penns, George Soroses, Oprah Winfreys, or Tiger Woodses, whose mega-wealth really does result in private jet rides, and yet exempts them from worries that increased taxes might wreck their small businesses.