2016 July 8^th

We begin today with one of my favorite right-wingers, Dr. Thomas Sowell. His column asks, “What are we really celebrating?” His answer, although not said specifically, seems to be ignorance. Early in his rant he writes that, “There was no question then that the United States was “exceptional” however much the smug elites of today—including our President—try to dismiss the idea.” If Sowell is saying that President Obama has not declared America to be great, exceptional, wonderful, or the equivalent he is lying. Here is a quote from President Obama’s speech to The Business Roundtable, “America is winning right now. America is great right now.” These remarks were to rebut Thomas Sowell’s prize presidential candidate, Donald Trump, whose theme is “Make America Great Again.” These remarks by President Obama do not fit the image that Thomas Sowell is trying to paint of the President and so they are to be ignored.

Sowell is upset that the Justice Department “…threatened prosecution of anyone who made inflammatory statements about Muslim boys accused of raping a 5 year old girl.” He sees these comments as infringing on the rights of people to make inflammatory statements. The law here is not obvious: While the First Amendment’s guarantees may be protected, inciting to riot is a different story.

Sowell pushes ahead on his riff about, “Such high handed use of government powers has become increasing common during the Obama administration. But an apathetic and uninformed public voted him a second term.” Not really, they were well enough informed  to understand the flim-flam that Mitt Romney tried to pull off. We do recall the tape of Romney’s comments to his high roller buddies about the 47 percent of Americans who pay no income tax and who would never vote for him. It is true that almost 47 percent of Americans pay no federal income tax. They pay no income tax because their income is beneath the level at which income tax payment is required. Many are retirees whose only source of income is Social Security. This is a situation that neither Thomas Sowell nor Mitt Romney will ever have to worry about nor will they ever understand.

Another factoid Sowell doesn’t mention, and neither does Romney, there are 78 thousand filers with incomes of 211 thousand dollars to 533 thousand dollars who also pay no federal income tax. Is it possible that some of them were in the room of high rollers Romney was talking to that afternoon?