Well, two months into his Presidency, and Barack Obama has broken arguably the campaign pledge that fended off Republican charges that Obama would increase taxes on not only the rich, but on the middle-class and the poor.
The Republicans were right.
"I can make a firm pledge," (Obama) said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."
Well, that was a lie...
The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama's promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.
This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.
A middle-income or poor person that smokes one pack of cigarettes a day will pay $222.65 in extra taxes to the government every year. That is $222.65 that won't go towards buying food or paying for the electric bill, all because Barack Obama broke his promise to the American people.
The White House responded by attempting to rewrite history and change change Obama's campaign statements:
"The president's position throughout the campaign was that he would not raise income or payroll taxes on families making less than $250,000, and that's a promise he has kept," said White House spokesman Reid H. Cherlin. "In this case, he supported a public health measure that will extend health coverage to 4 million children who are currently uninsured."
Well, somehow that doesn't really add up with :
Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.
And it wasn't just candidate Obama that made this new-broken pledge, it was also his choice for VP Joe Biden:
"No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised," Joe Biden said, "whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax."
Seems pretty clear to me. Obama promised no higher taxes on the middle class; Biden promised the same. Now there are higher taxes. Obama is a liar and we all fell for it.
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Ok, are you sick of the false outrage above? Yeah, I almost got sick while I was writing it. But this is the crap we have to deal with now from the media, the Republicans, and Democrats to the left of Obama. And, to be fair, many, on both sides of the aisle, were guilty of this during the George W. Bush presidency.
The more we exhibit false outrage, and the more it catches hold, the more it perpetuates itself. False outrage builds and builds like a katamari, and it doesn't stop until we all start to take ourselves a little less seriously and direct our anger and passion towards the things that really matter.
I felt 4/1 was the best time to make this point, and I wish you a wonderful April Fool's Day.