Yesterday, the incumbent showed up in Detroit to help roil up crowds of union members protesting Michigan’s potential passage of “right to work” legislation permitting workers to decide for themselves about joining a union. If the law passes, Michigan would become the 24th state to do so, joining the national trend toward removing the yoke of union control from around worker’s necks.
I mention this because it’s one more blatant example of the incumbent’s tendency to come down on the wrong side of major issues. Whereas in 2010, the percentage of workers belonging to a union in the United States was 11.4%. So that means 88.6% of the nation’s work force prefers to remain independent jobwise and negotiate for themselves.
In that regard, if you look at the incumbent’s entire constituency you find that it’s a conglomeration of disparate groups of people that tend to need help to survive, each of them looking for presidential support to bolster their individual weaknesses. And when you add them all up across the nation, they amass enough in total to provide the winning margin in the past election. However, as far as the nation’s economy goes, they’re actually a significant drain which means the revenue needed to support them has to come from somewhere else. In the present case, that comes down to the so-called “rich."
The incumbent's problem though, is that those being targeted as rich also happen to be the half of the population that already pays all the bills. And being pressed for more is beginning to really tick them off as almost never before. Which in turn is resulting in reactions like the one I found on Drudge this morning by Bloomberg’s Rich Miller and Alex Kowalski who wrote: “The wealthy look set to enjoy a windfall in the closing weeks of the year as companies push money out the door to beat the higher tax rates advocated by President Barack Obama.
More than 150 companies, from Costco Wholesale Corp. to Las Vegas Sands Corp., have declared special dividends totaling about $20 billion this quarter to avoid anticipated tax increases in 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Others, including law and private-equity firms, probably will pay bonuses, partnership distributions and commissions early for tax reasons, according to Lou Crandall, chief economist at Wrightson ICAP LLC in Jersey City, New Jersey.
'We’re going to have a big jump in household income in the fourth quarter' said Crandall, whose company is a subsidiary of ICAP Plc, the world’s largest broker of transactions between banks. 'It’s going to be in excess of $50 billion.'
Much of that will go to upper-income Americans, the very people Obama has targeted to pay higher taxes, including Las Vegas Sands controlling shareholder and Chief Executive Officer Sheldon Adelson."
So here we have another situation where the incumbent put together a plan that made no sense to begin with, and as usual by now, bet on the wrong horse. Because had he sided with those who make the economy hum in the first place, they’d have made enough bucks to help him support whoever he pleased.
But instead he took the wrong road, which reminds me of an old story by the late, great, Henny Youngman in which a man sat down in a diner, glanced at the wall and saw a sign saying “Watch Your Coat.” And while he sat gazing at his garment, somebody stole his lunch.
That's it for today folks
Adios
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