The Punishment Is Necessary

I have been looking at some of the live blogging of last night's Clinton Obama debate. And I found something extraordinary. According to commenter Simon (not me) at Althouse

Simon said...

Oh, and great answer from Obama on capital gains! Even though raising the rate lowers revenue and vice-versa, he wants to to raise capital gains tax to punish people who make too much money! Picture perfect!

8:10 PM

So taxes are no longer for raising money they are a form of punishment? Whoa Nellie. So under Obama we will not be governed, we will be punished.

If this is some kind of Bondage game what is the Safe Word? How do we make him stop? Not voting for him is one way to register your preference. Not voting for any Democrat would be even better. Punish them all before they can punish us. That is the spirit! And I know a safe phrase they can use. "I want to go home". That is the ticket. In fact that seems to be the ticket Democrats are running on this year. The "Send Us Home" ticket. I'm all for it.

Jonah Goldberg at the Corner has this take:

I don't cry "class warfare!" very often. But the beginning of Obama's capital gains tax question was amazing stuff. He conceded the premise that revenues go up when you cut capital gains taxes. But he said it would be worthwhile to raise them nonetheless as an issue of "fairness" because some people are making too much money. In other words, even if the government loses money to pay for all of the wonderful things Obama wants to do, it'd be worth it because sticking it to rich people is a good in and of itself.

I get it. Obama thinks there are too many rich people in America and thinks they should be living elsewhere. Or maybe they deserve it because of slavery or something.

Well at least he has been listening to those U Chicago Economists about what happens when capital gains taxes get excessive. It is a start. I still think he needs to take a vacation for a couple of years in Illinois post Nov 08. After that perhaps he could retire "to spend more time with his family" post election '10. Or perhaps those of us in Illinois will get lucky and he will do it sooner. I'm praying for it. I want the punishment to stop.

Cross Posted at Classical Values