Rossputin.com Rational Thinking About Our World

This morning, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, and enthusiastic supporter of Barack Obama, continued the downward ratchet of the level of income at which Barack Obama intends to confiscate income.

Obama started at $250,000, then said $200,000.

Joe Biden then dropped the bar to $150,000 three days ago.

And now, Bill Richardson says that "there is a tax cut for those" making $120,000 and under, implying that anyone making over $120,000 will be penalized by an Obama administration.

I realize that liberals will argue with that conclusion. But what alternative is there other than a weak argument that Obama might lower taxes below $X of income, raise taxes above $Y of income, and do nothing in between. I believe that outcome is unlikely, and if he tries it, he'll blow a huge hole in the budget.

Since Obama is planning one of the largest expansions of government spending in history it will not be possible to cut taxes for people below $X without having to either raise taxes on people above $X or create a budget deficit which dwarfs even the worst of recent government profligacy. And, as the repeated lowering of that bar shows, the Obama campaign is realizing that their budgetary sleight of hand during the campaign is simply too large to be believed, even by gullible Americans.

Maybe anticipation of record-breaking deficits is the reason that Barney Frank has been out talking about why we should ignore the deficit for a while, but I don't believe the American public will stand for government spending citizens' money freely while we all have to cut back...indeed causing us to have to cut back more because the dead hand of government is that much deeper in our pockets.

Of course, the only people who would be surprised by this are people who have a "willing suspension of disbelief" about Obama's impossible promises.

As I mentioned yesterday, you know Obama's claims are truly outrageous when even the AP and CBS News all but call him a liar.

In case it's not clear enough from those articles, however, I'll say it: Obama is a liar. His claims about how much he plans to spend are directly contradicted by his own web site. And his suggestion that he can pay for his planned massive increase in the size of government by just taxing the rich is also a lie. To get even close, he'd have to define rich somewhere around where we now have the poverty line, and even that would probably not cover it.

As Obama gets closer to winning, he's lowering the expectations bar so that it will be hard for others to call him a liar later. But if you believe that even $120,000 is where the confiscation will start, you're fooling yourself. The only people who may do better under Obama are those currently at or below the poverty line. Unfortunately, the benefit to those will be more than offset by the increasing number of people who are moved from the middle class to poverty by his misguided "soak the rich" mentality.