Hopey Dopey

Editor

I thought Obama's "hopey, changey" mode was as dead as his failed programs of the past three years. Certainly the anemic 1.7% growth in GDP in 2011, and persistent high unemployment, should be enough to make him try Plan B.

But then came his State of the Union address, and it was the same-old, same old. Just another big grab bag of promises to take our minds off failed past promises. His speech was full of Occupy items, even as Occupy dies a lingering death. The only place Occupy persists is in Oakland, where it is draining an already empty budget. 

Of course Democrat class envy still rules, even with an expiring Occupy movement. The latest numbers show Mitt Romney paid 42% of his income to taxes and charities. Vice President Biden paid $326 to charity, which put him on par with other Democrat stalwarts such as Al Gore and Bill "tax deduction for used underwear" Clinton. Most of Romney's taxes are paid as capital gains at the 15% rate, the same as other wealthy folk like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. To  pay a higher rate discourages investment, since in inflationary times a significant portion of capital gains are inflation, and corporate profits are double taxed, once as corporate income, and then as dividend income.

Mitt Romney chooses to pick where he wants his charitable donations to go, rather than turning his money over to the government to waste. Democrats have an aversion to letting people choose how to spend their own money, because they always think they know where other peoples' money should be spent. Like on Solyndra, and on "Enron1" as Joe Biden called it, a company that was going to make batteries for electric cars that just announced filing for bankruptcy after blowing $100 million of our taxes. And there are a lot more of these government-supported companies heading down the same hole. There's no hope, and small change, for them.

Mike Combs

Gualala

Fool's Paradise for Democrats

Editor

Democrats are always challenging Republicans for their budget plan, even though in California a Republican budget has no chance of ever being considered, let alone being passed. If I were asked to fill in this blank, I would say the plan is to don’t spend money you don’t have. When California was relatively in good shape financially, as recently as 2005, the legislature found many ways to spend the “excess” when in reality there was none. The Democrats just studiously avoided noticing that they had created an overgrown, expensive bureaucracy that generated an enormous and rapidly growing unfunded public employee pension liability. While overlooking this liability, Democrats “balanced” the budget with gimmickry such as taking on long-term debt to cover current operating costs.

California cities and counties did the same. Oakland, for example, used redevelopment fund revenue to pay for their bloated city payroll. For Oakland, a city job was just another form of welfare. It’s ironic that this practice, which apparently was undertaken while Jerry Brown was Oakland’s mayor, will make Oakland fire several hundred city employees now that Governor Brown has killed redevelopment agencies.

California Democrats continue living in a fool’s paradise, where pretending to not notice that soon the costs of the unfunded pension liabilities will not only eat up everything they thought they could “invest” in tax-payer subsidized luxuries such as high-speed rail (from Fresno to Bakersfield), but also engulf education, law enforcement, and all the bread-and-butter governmental responsibilities.

The lucky Californians will be the ones who can move to the better managed states, such as Texas. They will feel right at home there, since many of their neighbors will be retired California legislators and public employees who will be living there to escape the ruinous high taxes and rapidly deteriorating services of California.

Mike Combs

Gualala

I was "Working Poor"

Editor

Mr. Radtkey is a history major, so I understand him erroneously saying I “insult the working poor whose taxes pay (my) military pension.” However, the bottom 48% pay none while the top 25% pay 90% of personal income taxes, so the working poor pay nobody anything. Fifty years ago my poor working-class family paid income taxes instead of receiving tax credits. Now Alice and I pay income taxes (including on Social Security) which cover most of my retirement.

I also understand him confusing facts from studies of employment and single-parent families from Sweden and the United States and considering them my opinions, since few today value facts over opinions.

I don’t insult the working poor, since for many years that included my family. After we towed our trailer to Point Arena in 1949 we lived in an abandoned high school. In 1954, when I was 12 and brother Ron was11, we borrowed a workhorse and dug a full-sized basement and helped build the house east of the Pacific Charter School. Pop was an oil field “roughneck” before becoming a lumberjack, and Mom cleaned the Arena Theater and hotels before her crippled leg prevented her from walking downtown, so she cut and set hair in our kitchen.

I bucked hay bales for Vic Soldani and Walt Stornetta, worked at Bojock Lumber and the Biaggi Lane veneer mill, hand-milked a cow, and other jobs. My friends did as much or more. None of the best Point Arena High graduates, including me, received scholarships.

To supplement my Air Force income I drove school buses, and later taught accounting, management, and economics at night for eight colleges in a 10-year period.

Mr. Radtkey apparently overlooked my solutions: pursue marketable skills and education; go where the jobs are and work hard; discourage single parenthood.

Michael B. Combs, CPA, Major, US Air Force (retired)

MBA, Michigan State; Bach. Science, Summa Cum Laude, University of Arizona (majoring in Accounting and Russian); Indiana University; Santa Rosa JC; Humboldt State; and night school at two other colleges

Gualala