![\"clip_image002\"](\"http:\/\/jerrypournelle.com\/chaosmanor\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/clip_image00278.gif\" "\\"clip_image002\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nThe campaign scene is pretty dull. President Obama has been in Los Angeles raising political money, and I suppose he was successful, but there hasn\u2019t been a lot of stir from it. His speeches continue on the theme of \u201cfairness\u201d, but they don\u2019t seem to be getting all that much traction.<\/p>\n
I continue with the opinion that I have mixed feelings on \u201cfairness\u201d of taxes and taxing the rich, and particularly raising taxes on income from risk investment: it seems an odd way to encourage people to make risky investments and create jobs.<\/p>\n
I also note that while Warren Buffet paid only a million or two in personal taxes, his investment company paid $5 billion last year, and he owns 30% of the company; which sort of raises the total tax burden he has assumed. As to Ms. Warren\u2019s viral speech about how others paid for the roads and the schools and the police force, I would have thought those are mostly paid by local property taxes, and if the factory owner has got away with not paying those he\u2019s pretty clever. I would have thought that factory owners paid a lot of property taxes. How much of that is fair is, I would presume, a matter for local communities. Raise them too much and the factory moves elsewhere, as Massachusetts has long ago discovered. Of course the remedy for that, according to liberals, is to eliminate competition \u2013 make the taxes national so they can\u2019t be escaped. Oddly enough that was all debated as part of the Convention of 1787, but you\u2019d never guess that from listening to this Harvard Professor, who doesn\u2019t seem to have read The Federalist Papers or Tocqueville. But then that\u2019s not too surprising.<\/p>\n
In any event, what I don\u2019t want is to continue to finance the 7% exponential rise in government spending, and any new income to the feds will have that result. I have more faith that Mr. Buffet will spend his money more wisely than the Department of Education can do so, or the Department of Agriculture for that matter (which has both Bunny Inspectors and a SWAT team).<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the campaign just now.<\/p>\n
<\/b><\/p>\n View 694 Monday, Tuesday, September 27, 2011 Sunday, October 2, at 3:15 PM at the West Hollywood Book Fair I\u2019ll be discussing \u201cMyth and Reality\u201d in the world of writing. For reasons not known to me we\u2019re in the \u201cThat\u2019s Entertainment\u201d pavilion, as opposed to fiction or mystery or something \u2026 Continue reading <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"