That’s Right Nate

Many years ago, when the Italian artist Michelangeo was feeling particularly uninspired, the Pope locked him in the Sistine Chapel.  Now, I am not one to look at the papists for examples, but you can’t deny he got a pretty nice ceiling when all was said and done.   Nowadays, things have changed and with the exception of a handful of edgey alternative rockers with huge crystal meth addictions, most artists want to be paid for their work.  What is stopping the truly brilliant American artists from creating equally impressive art?  Well,  according to Victoria Jackson its the Obama tax hike.

Victoria Jackson is an American treasure and the star of such films as UHF, Couch Trip, and Baby Boom.  Currently, she is recording songs for cats on her ukulele.   A star of Victoria Jackson’s magnitude can afford to rest on her laurels and that’s just what she’s doing.  Why?  Well, as Victoria or Ms. Jackson if you’re nasty put it herself, “My motivation is gone, because [Obama] will punish me if I’m successful. That’s how you start communism, is just take — Cuba. Obama wants to be Castro.”  Who knows what further artistic endeavors we are missing from Miss Jackson?  Still, that is just the tip of the ice berg.

Think of the other big stars like Bronson Pinchot, Steven Seagal, Brian Austin Green, Aaron Carter, Dana Carvey,and Andrew McCarthy.  Could it be that Obama’s high taxes are stopping them from creating their best work right in the prime of their careers?  I know what you’re thinking.  Stars in the 1970s and early 1980s used to produce great work before Ronald Reagan worked his magic on the top tax bracket.   How did that happen?  Its quite simple.  With higher taxes came big government programs.   One such program was used to give out of work actors and musicians a break.  In fact congressman Sonny Bono took advantage of it.

The Love Boat was the brainchild of television producer Aaron Spelling.  Mister Spelling was a big donor to Democratic causes.  He used the clout that this arrangement gave him to land a rather sizable $50 million grant from the United States government to create a project for unmotivated actors.  It was your typical big government WPA style project that gave actors what was supposed to be a one time paycheck in exchange for keeping quiet about the ridiculous tax rate.   Unfortunately, certain stars like Tom Bosley, Betty White, and Bob Denver began to abuse the program and like most big government programs it collapsed under the weight of its own waste.

What is left for stars of Victoria’s magnitude today?   Mostly reality television shows and guest appearances on talk shows.  I’m not advocating another big budget government program like The Love Boat, but there has to be a way to get our stars motivated again.  The current Obama tax rate will deprive America of cultural icons like Victoria Jackson just when we need them the most.   Some may judge America by the might of its industry or the power of its military, but isn’t it time we looked after the sound of its laughter?

The Louisiana Purchase cost the United States $15,000,000 and for that money we got 828,000 square miles.  With the amount of money that Obama is spending on his budget we could buy approximately 9,660,000,000,000,000 square miles from the French Government.  However, we’re not getting land.   We’re simply getting a budget that will destroy us all.

George Bush has been getting a lot of blame lately, but I wonder if even he could have foreseen how irresponsible Obama would be.  You can be sure that he wouldn’t have spent the large surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton if he knew that the next President would turn out to be such a big time spender.  Bush was counting on having a reasonable and intelligent successor who would be thrifty.  That’s why his Harvard Business School educated mind decided to bite the bullet and give tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals in our country.  Instead, we now have Obama trying to bungle his way to prosperity.

Let’s talk about those rich folks who are being taxed so unfairly.   There is a horrible misconception that these people are super wealthy, but they’re not.  These are the people you see everyday in your condo, playing tennis at your club, or in your board meeting.  They are lawyers, plastic surgeons, NBA point guards, shipping magnates, self-storage company owners, and hedge fund managers.  A family making $350,000 a year would see their tax bill rise by as much as $4600.  That $4600 would pay for 1/4 of a car.   Maybe not for the parent, but surely for a teenager.  Hedgefund managers would actually see their income tax rate go from 15% to 39.6% as their income would be treated as income instead of capital gains.  This is an outrage.

George Bush worked very hard to raise the standard of living.  The rich saw their incomes increase under Bush and that’s as it should be.  The top 1% of the country pays 40% of the nation’s taxes and that is despite only owning about 48% of the country’s property.  This hardly seems fair to me.  By reversing Bush’s tax cuts Obama is sending us back to the horrible economic times of the Clinton administration.

George Bush was a man of God.  He knew that this country would be spared from all natural disasters if we just prayed hard enough.  Bush knew that with God on our side there was never any reason to set aside money for natural disasters.   Obama has put $20 billion aside for natural disasters.  God has protected us the past 8 years President Obama.  Why isn’t that good enough for you?  I guess that’s what you get when you go to church services about how whitey is keeping you down instead of about how Jesus is lifting you up.

George Bush was always finding ways to stretch a dime.  Do you know how much the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost US tax payers?  $50 billion? $100 billion? $500 billion?  Try 0.  George Bush never had to add the wars to the budget because he knew he could just take the money from some other program.  Iraq was probably just fought with waste he trimmed off of the PBS budget.  Obama after crying about the wars Bush had us fighting immediately jacks up the spending on them.  Instead of Bush’s free wars, Obama is spending $50 billion.  I hope they’re using gold plated bullets at that price.  Its time for Republicans to take a stand against this kind of wasteful spending.

Yesterday, I called Bobby Jindal the clear winner for his ability to take complex issues like magnetic levitating trains and make them sound much less intimidating by adopting a speaking style somewhat similar to the great Mr. Fred Rogers.  However, some of you didn’t want to take my word for it.   On Tuesday, the Louisiana GOP posted to Youtube a clip showing a focus group reacting to Bobby Jindal’s speech.  They didn’t post Jindal’s words for school children will be reading them in text books for years to come–instead they showed us how real Americans felt about the Louisiana Governor in case we still weren’t sure how we should feel.

The first person interviewed was an older woman with a raccoon or some other such furry animal or hat upon her head.   She summed up the governor performance by saying, “I thought Jindal performed exemplarily.”  I took it from her elocutioning that she was probably a Bush supporter as well.  She did comment on the Mr. Rogers quality that I also found so appealing.

Another woman followed up saying “his patriotism was the overriding theme in what he had to say”.  I to was looking to see whether Jindal or Obama would come off as more patriotic.  The budget stuff can take care of itself, but a true leader carries his love of country in his heart, just under his flag lapel pin.

Finally, a man who pulled off the vest look nicely praised Bobby Jindal’s belief in people over government doing everything for us.  Of course this belief has led Jindal to his principled stand against federal unemployment monies for the jobless in Lousiana.  I mean come on.  Grab your horn and go to New Orleans.  You don’t need a bailout when you can jam on the street corner.  Jindal has emerged as a rising star following his speech on Tuesday night.  Everyday Americans think so and if you don’t, maybe you need to question your own patriotism.