To paraphrase Marx, Liberalism is the religion of the asses. Liberalism in the United States has become virtually indistinguishable from socialism and/or statism. Webster’s dictionary defines socialism as “any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.” Since Obama has taken over the White House, we’ve seen the government take over General Motors, Citibank, and dozens of other companies. The #1 push of the administration now is to nationalize health care. Can the “public option” be described as anything other than government ownership of the production and distribution of health services?

The modern Liberal believes fervently in the rightness of his cause, regardless of the objective evidence that they are wrong. Facts rarely enter the equation. Liberals are more concerned with feelings. Liberals *feel* that the world is unfair, and they intend to use the power of government to right wrongs. To justify these feelings, the Liberal has built an array of myths that constitute their belief system.  These myths have become a surrogate religion for the Liberals. Below are the top 5 Liberal Myths, and the reasons why they are wrong.

1. Conservatives are Racist -The Modern Liberal firmly believes most (all?) Conservatives are racist. The primary motivator of those who oppose Obama must be racism. If not for our fear/mistrust/bigotry towards Obama because he’s a black man, we would embrace him and his causes. Any attempt to use logic to dissuade them is met with outrage and condemnation. As an example, here is an excerpt from a typical exchange I had with a Liberal on Facebook regarding Obama and race. I had pointed out that the so-called racist GOP had appointed Condie Rice and Colin Powell to the cabinet, placed Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, and was currently run by Chairman Michael Steele:

“…who were not black in any sense except the epidermic.” Wow! When I challenged him on this point, he repeated his charges and pointed me to the Wikipedia page on Uncle Tom. Seriously, you can’t make this kind of nuttiness up.

The Truth – Liberals are the real racists. Cries of racism are merely Liberals projecting their own issues on to others. Conservatives and Republicans have a long history of promoting equality among the races. The Republican Party was founded on the principal of anti-slavery. In 1964, a greater percentage of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats. In 1967, when Thurgood Marshall was nominated to the Supreme Court, only 1 Republican Senator voted against him. 10 Democrats voted not to confirm the nominee of their own party, chief among them Senator Robert Byrd. Even though Byrd was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and he led the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act, Byrd is considered a hero of the Democratic Party, is still a Senator, and is currently President pro tempore of the Senate, making him 3rd in line of succession to the Presidency.

George Bush appointed Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, and Liberals excoriated him. Spike Lee called Thomas “a handkerchief-head, chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Tom.” Time Magazine ran an opinion piece on Thomas’ record in 2001 called “Uncle Tom Justice.” George W. Bush appointed the first (and second) black Secretary of State, appointed the first black National Security Advisor, and the first Hispanic Attorney General, but the modern Liberal still thinks he was racist and they were sell-outs.

In 2007, the Huffington Post ran an opinion story “The Redefinition of Uncle Tom.” “Among us are a small community of white-collar professionals, entertainers and athletes including notable Uncle Toms like Clarence Thomas and Condoleza Rice who consistently try their damnedest to create public policy that screws over their own people.” Sadly, these are not isolated opinions. It is now dogma with the modern Liberal that Conservatives are racist and black Conservatives are sell-outs.

Prior to the 2008 election, I wrote “The Triumph of Mediocrity,” delineating Obama’s lack of qualifications.  Nowhere in that article do I say or imply “oh crap he’s a black guy!” I simply don’t care. His race was never important to me. By contrast, Congresswoman/former Democratic VP candidate/Hillary Clinton advisor Geraldine Ferraro declared prior to the election, ”If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.” Which party is really focused on race?

Racism is used to attack Conservatives, because it is a way of suppressing debate and marginalizing opponents. Racism claims allow the Liberal to avoid examining the real reasons for Conservative opposition. Conservatives oppose Obama and his statist agenda because it represents a loss of freedom and liberty. We oppose the takeover of private industries, the out of control deficit spending, and the ruination of our health care system on principal, not because Barry’s black. We opposed Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton for the exact same reasons, and they are all white. This simple fact is lost on the Modern Liberal.

2. Human Activity is Killing the Planet – The Modern Liberal believes the planet is dying, and man is the cause. Algore famously claimed “the Earth has a fever.” While Conservative racism is the primary delusion of the Modern Liberal, environmentalism is their religion. The environmental movement as it exists today was launched primarily by Rachel Carson and her book Silent Spring. In the book, Carson argued that wide-spread use of pesticides was ruining the environment and killing birds, as well as harming humans. The result of this book and Carson’s campaign was a world-wide ban on the use of DDT.

With DDT, Liberals were able to claim control over the production of the world food supply. Not satisfied with just outlawing a pesticide, Liberals turned their sights to regulating every aspect of our lives, from the light bulbs we use, to how much water we can use to flush the toilet or take a shower. To justify this, Liberals needed an over-arching crisis to panic the public. What better target than the weather? It changes often, has “extreme” events that can be pointed to, and is a “problem” so big only government can solve it.

In 1970, the first Earth Day was held with the goal of creating a “healthy, sustainable environment. A laudable goal. The 3 main issues that the Earth Day’ers were concerned with were pesticides, over-population, and global cooling. Silent Spring had sounded the alarm on pesticides, Paul Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” warned of mass starvation from over population, and the scientific “consensus” on the climate was that the world was headed for another ice age. Environmentalists continued to harp on the coming ice age, and pushing for government action to reverse it, until temperatures started rising in 1979.

For instance, in 1974, Time Magazine’s cover story was “Another Ice Age?” In 1975, Newsweek warned “There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth.” Ideas at the time to solve this crisis included “melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers.”

When things got warmer in 1979/1980, the enviro-alarmists didn’t miss a beat. The same people who were preaching global cooling did a find/replace on all their grant applications to change the wording to global warming and kept on pushing for government interaction. As an example, Jim Hansen and S.I. Rasool, both of NASA, and current leaders of the global warming movement who Algore frequently cites, in 1971 predicted an ice age within 50 years.

Today, the Modern Liberal believes fervently in the theory of anthropogenic global warming. The basic premise of this theory is that human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, is increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is expected that the level of atmospheric CO2 could double over pre-industrial levels within the next 90 years. The enviro-alarmists claim the science behind global warming is “settled” and a “consensus” of scientists now believe in the theory. The Wikipedia page on global warming opinion claims “since 2007, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion.” Those who oppose the theory of global warming are labeled “deniers” and ridiculed for opposing the “overwhelming majority opinion” of the scientific community. Liberals are now pushing for a massive “carbon tax” and a “cap-and-trade” system, meant to strangle Western economies and production, while transferring wealth to developing countries, all under the guise of reducing carbon output as a response to global warming.

The Truth – Environmentalism is a question of faith, not science. While some environmental concerns over the past 40 years have yielded good results (the air is cleaner now), an equal amount of damage has been wrought based on the misguided actions of Liberal environmentalists. DDT was banned for its supposed danger to humans, but DDT has proven to be a remarkably safe chemical. It was so safe that J. Gordon Edwards, a scientist and proponent of using DDT used to eat a tablespoon of DDT before each lecture on the topic. He died this year of a heart attack while mountain climbing, at age 84.

The consequence of DDT’s ban has been millions of unnecessary malaria deaths, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Each year, Africa sees an estimated 500,000,000 cases of malaria and over 1,000,000 people die of the disease. PER YEAR. These deaths are preventable with DDT. More people have died unnecessarily due to malaria since the DDT ban than were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust. By some estimates, over 100,000,000 people have died due to the DDT ban. But rather than abandon the misconception that DDT is bad, the Liberal response is to buy mosquito nets. Apparently, the left considers these people expendable to their enviro-agenda, presumably because they are dark-skinned and live on another continent. See point #1 above.

Global warming is a more complex house of cards, so debunking the nonsense takes more work. To believe in the theory of anthropogenic global warming, you must believe: i) global mean temperatures are rising to unprecedented levels; ii) CO2 levels are rapidly increasing and humans are responsible; iii) There is a significant causal relationship between the changes in CO2 levels and changes in the global mean temperature; iv) the changes in both global mean temperatures and CO2 levels are harmful; v) the amount of harm caused by these changes outweighs the benefits of the human activity that is causing them. Let’s take these one at a time.

i) Global mean temperatures are rising to unprecedented levels? Maybe. The truth is no one knows, since no one was around with a thermometer 1,000 years ago. We are in a general warming cycle since the “little ice age” in the 1600s, but global temperatures are cyclical. The global warming proponents several years ago predicted out of control temperature increases based on the so-called “hockey stick” graph aka chart MBH98 from the IPCC 2001 report, produced principally by Michael E. Mann:

This chart claimed to show out of control, unprecedented warming. There have been several papers published that showed that Mann’s methods were flawed. More importantly, however, is the fact that since the study was originally created, the observable data shows that the conclusions of Mann et al were incorrect. Since, 1998, we’ve been getting colder, significantly colder, even though CO2 levels have continued to rise. Cliff Harris and Randy Mann at longrangeweather.com produced this graph the shows, principally, that global temperatures are always changing, and cycle up and down in response to solar radiation and volcanic activity:

Harris & Mann, in the report accompanying this graph, predict: “prolonged cycle of wide weather ‘extremes,’ the worst in at least 1,000 years, will continue and perhaps become even more severe, especially by the mid 2010s”; “The next ‘warm and dry’ climatic phase is scheduled to arrive in the early 2030s, probably peaking around 2038.”; “By the end of this 21st Century, a big cool down may occur that could ultimately lead to expanding glaciers worldwide, even in the mid-latitudes. We could possibly see even a new Great Ice Age. Based on long-term climatic data, these major ice ages have recurred about every 11,500 years.”

So are we getting warmer is the warming unprecedented? Maybe? We were getting warmer, then we got cooler, some expect us to get warm again, followed by…you guess it, cooling! Is the warming unprecedented? No one knows. Any charts showing temperatures before around 1850 are estimates based on tree rings and ice cores. Scientists are guessing. We didn’t have thermometers then, and there is no way to test a tree ring temperature hypothesis. We do know anecdotally that Greenland was inhabited and farmed during the Medieval Warming Period, which would tend to indicate that area was warmer than it is today. But that is just a micro-climate. 70% of the earth is covered by water. Ocean temperatures play a much greater role in global mean temperature levels, and those are immeasurable by tree rings and ice cores.

ii) CO2 levels are rapidly increasing and humans are responsible? Maybe. CO2 levels are definitely increasing compared to recent history. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been measuring CO2 levels for the last 50 years. Some of the most reliable measurements come from the Mauna Loa Observatory. NOAA clearly shows a consistent rise in CO2 levels over the last 50 years.

When presented on a chart like this, it looks very ominous. That is a steep curve! Oh no! But like most things related to global warming, there is more to the story. Here is the same data graphed in Excel:

The first chart has been modified by NOAA to amplify the scale, making the growth rate of CO2 appear much worse than reality. So how much is CO2 rising? Around 1.8 molecules of CO2 per 1,000,000 molecules of atmosphere, per year. And looking at the data and either chart, you see that the rate of increase is relatively constant. CO2 levels prior to the Industrial Revolution, around 1750AD, are generally thought to have been around 278 parts per million. It is assumed that although CO2 is constantly being released and absorbed by natural processes, that prior to 1750AD these processes were in equilibrium, so any increases are attributable to human activity. Based on current levels of CO2 and the current rate of change, CO2 levels will double from the pre-Industrial Period in another 90 years or so, assuming nothing else changes.

The real question is whether these increases in CO2 are significant. The answer remains maybe. While CO2 is considered a “greenhouse gas,” CO2 only accounts for approximately 5% of the greenhouse effect in the troposphere. 95% of the greenhouse effect is cause by water, in the form of vapor and clouds.

iii) There is a significant causal relationship between the changes in CO2 levels and changes in the global mean temperature? Maybe, but probably not. The problem here is that the Earth’s climate is a nonlinear dynamical system. What this means is that the climate can “exhibit a completely unpredictable behavior, which might seem to be random.” CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and CO2 levels have been increasing, but the global mean temperature has fallen for the last 10 years. How come? Because there is more to the equation than simply an increase in CO2 equals and increase in temperature.

Climate temperatures are a factor of how much solar energy is produced, how much of that energy is reflected, how much energy reaches the surface, how much of that energy is radiated back into space, and how much is absorbed. These are interactions that are incredibly complex. One of the likely reasons temperatures have gone down for the last 10 years is an reduction in solar activity.

As the chart from the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM) above shows, there is a strong correlation between temperatures and solar activity. This corresponds with common sense. If the Sun sends more energy (heat) towards the Earth, one would expect the Earth to get hotter. Even this is not conclusive though. As stated above, the climate is a complex, open, nonlinear dynamical system. Solar activity creates heat. Heat affects weather. Weather dissipates heat. And that is just one of  myriad of interactions.

iv) The changes in both global mean temperatures and CO2 levels are harmful? Now we get to the crux of the issue. We know CO2 levels are gradually increasing. We know that temperatures are fluctuating, on a general upswing from the last mini Ice Age. We know if everything else remained the same, an increase in CO2 might cause an increase in global temperatures. Unfortunately for the Liberals, everything else rarely remains the same. An increase in CO2, causing an increase in surface temps, increases water vapor evaporation, which increases precipitation, which cools the planet. The increase in CO2 levels is causing the planet to get greener. Even though global warming kooks try to label CO2 as a pollutant, the truth is it is a fertilizer. The increase in CO2 levels is causing trees to grow, and increasing crop yields (ie. more food). Clearly a benefit to humans.

Temperatures for the last 10 years have been falling, effectively erasing the gains of the 20th century, but would it be such a bad thing if temperatures went up a little? Alarmists point to rising sea levels, but sea levels have been rising steadily since the last ice age at a rate of 2mm to 3mm per year, and humans have shown a remarkable ability to outrun them. In general, human prosperity and wealth have increased as the planet warms. The Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, and the last 150+ years of prosperity occurred in part because of the more temperate climate. Ask the average person if they’d rather live through a harsh winter or a hot summer, and they’ll break out the sunblock.

v) The amount of harm caused by these changes outweighs the benefits of the human activity that is causing them? Almost certainly not. As described above, we may have warming, that warming may be caused in a small part by CO2, and that warming may have some negative consequences, as well as some positive consequences. That is a lot of uncertainty. The solutions being proposed by the Liberals, however, are not uncertain. The Kyoto protocols would have almost no impact on global temperatures, but would cost trillions of dollars. The Obama Cap-And-Trade scheme would cripple the US economy by shifting money and jobs overseas, but would not reduce carbon 1 molecule.

Global warming advocates claim that global warming will impact the “poor” the most, but the real and immediate threat to the poor is, poverty. Energy independence is a real problem, but the solutions (increased drilling, new refineries, nuclear) are the antithesis of what the Liberals support. If Liberals really wanted to cut carbon emissions, they’d demand a new nuclear power plant be constructed in every state in the next 5 years. But Liberalism is synonymous with NIMBYism. Every dollar we waste on global warming pseudo-science is a dollar lost to dealing with other, more immediate and real threats. In the end, any cost benefit analysis would rule out most global warming “solutions.”

Lastly, we must address the oft-heard mantra of the Modern Left that the “consensus” of scientists “overwhelmingly “believe” that global warming is an immediate threat, and that the science is “settled.” Well, real science has nothing to do with beliefs or consensus. As scientist, doctor, and world renowned author Michael Crichton so brilliantly stated in his speeches on global warming:

I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you’re being had. Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus.

Consensus doesn’t count, repeatable results do. One of the main problems with the global warming models is they don’t predict the past very well. As Crichton points out, the IPCC admits in their 2001 report that the models don’t work even in reverse, when all the inputs are known. “Accurate simulation of current climate does not guarantee the ability of a model to simulate climate change correctly. Climate models now have some skill in simulating changes in climate since 1850 (see Section 8.6.1), but these changes are fairly small compared with many projections of climate change into the 21st century. An important motivation for attempting to simulate the climatic conditions of the past is that such experiments provide opportunities for evaluating how models respond to large changes in forcing.”

Only some skill? There are only 2 ways to test the effectiveness of computer model simulations. One is to replay historical data through them and see if they accurately predict observed data. The other is to use them to predict the future, and then wait and see if the predictions match the results. Well, according to the IPCC, their simulations only work at a 95% confidence level in reverse.

Most estimates say if the CO2 levels double, the greenhouse effect would increase global mean temperatures by 1 degree Celsius. BUT, the variation from observed levels is enough that it could more than make up for that 1 degree. And none of these models predicted the last 10 years of cooling. So if the models don’t work for historical data, and don’t work at predicting the future, then what good are they?

Human activity is not killing the planet, but Modern Liberal environmentalism is killing people and threatening the global economy. Millions of people died from the DDT ban. Global warming is the latest in a long stream of enviro-wackiness. None of this is to suggest that we should haphazardly abuse our environment. As the old saying goes, you don’t crap where you sleep. A shift to nuclear power does not imply random dumping of nuclear waste in the oceans. Pesticides that cause significant damage should not be used if there are viable and cost effective alternatives. Using better technology such as biodegradable plastics to reduce landfill waste and ocean pollution is a great approach.

When evaluating environmental problems and solutions, we need to ask: 1) what is the real risk; 2) what is the expected benefit; 3) how much will it cost. When something like Kyoto will cost trillions of dollars for a 0.6C reduction in mean temperature, a rational person would quickly discard the idea. Liberals are pushing this agenda as a way of gaining government control. It is time to end the silliness.

3. Health Care is a Right – The cause du jour for the Modern Liberal is health care reform. According to Liberals, health care in this country is “broken.” Liberals point to life expectancy rates, infant mortality rates, and census reports on the uninsured as proof that our system requires massive overhauls. Insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are reaping obscene profits by denying care to their customers and charging outrageous rates. Underlying all of the arguments for health care reform is the concept that health care is a “right.” So goes the Liberal mindset, in a country as “rich” as the United States no person should be denied care for any reason.

The Liberals have been pushing this theory for a long time. In 1944, FDR proposed a 2nd Bill of Rights which included “The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health”. The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights declared in article 25 “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

The Truth – As our founders recognized, rights are entitlements and permissions granted by our creator, which the government cannot restrict or take away. As I wrote last year, “you cannot have a right that compels another to act against their own interests. My right to free speech does not compel anyone to listen. My right to free press does not compel anyone to publish what I wrote. My right to assemble does not compel anyone to join me. My right to bear arms does not compel the manufacturer to give me arms for free.”

With respect to health care as a supposed right, “the question unanswered is at whose expense? Does my “right” to health care require a doctor to treat me? Does it require that treatment be at the market price, the price I think I can afford, the price some bureaucrat in Washington decides is “fair”? If I have a “right” to health care, why isn’t health care free? Who is the doctor, or the government, to deny me my supposed “right” to health care just because I don’t feel like paying?”

As Dr. Leonard Peikoff pointed out in 1993 when discussing HillaryCare, “if your mere desire for something, anything, imposes a duty on other people to satisfy you, then they have no choice in their lives, no say in what they do, they have no liberty, they cannot pursue their happiness. Your “right”… at their expense means that they become rightless serfs, i.e., your slaves. Your right to anything at others’ expense means that they become rightless… you don’t need to think of health care as a special case; it is just as apparent if the government were to proclaim a universal right to food, or to a vacation, or to a haircut.”

The founding fathers were clear on this concept. They debated endlessly the nature, source, and extent of the rights of man. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Your right to life is the right to exist. What you make of your existence is up to you. Your right to liberty is the right to act, free of coercion and interference. Your right to pursue happiness is your right to act in your own self interests.

These rights guarantee opportunity but not outcome. The right to life doesn’t guarantee you will live. The right to liberty doesn’t guarantee you will act. The right to pursue happiness does not guarantee your actions will succeed. Building on these rights, the founding fathers saw fit to enumerate additional rights in the 1st 10 Amendments to the Constitution. Each of these rights represent expansion on the concept of liberty by providing limits on what the Federal government can do.

Contrast these rights with the supposed right to health care. First, the term health care is ill defined. Does the right to health care mean you have the right to emergency care, preventative care, elective surgery, cosmetic surgery, etc? Does health care equal insurance or medical services? If drugs are to be provided, do we only cover prescription medicines, or are common over-the-counter drugs like aspirin, antacid, antihistamine, and cough syrup also covered? Should the care be free or merely “affordable?”

Since not all doctors are created equal, how do we fulfill the “right” to access to the best cardiologist? Do we have the right to the services of whatever doctor we choose, or whatever doctor is assigned to us? And what of the doctor’s rights? Do doctors have the right to charge a market rate for their services? Do they have the right to select their patients? Do doctors have the right to limit the number of patients they will accept? How does a right to health care protect the liberty of health care providers?

Much of the debate surrounding health care focuses on health insurance providers. Liberals continue to perpetuate the myth that insurance companies deny coverage to obtain obscene profits. For instance, healthcareforamericanow.org (HCAN), a labor union front group, commissioned a study in 2009 that claimed “Profits at 10 of the country’s largest publicly traded health insurance companies in 2007 rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007, from $2.4 billion to $12.9 billion.” The implication is that these companies increased their profits by denying coverage.

The problem is, this assertion is crap. Profits at the 10 largest companies increased on an absolute dollar basis due to mergers and acquisitions. If a company that makes $1 million in profits acquires another company that makes $1 million in profits,  then its profits double, but so does its size, revenues, expenses, etc. No conclusion can be drawn other than the new company is bigger than the old company. The truth is health insurance companies had profit margins in 2008 of just 2.2%. In Q3 2009, these margins have risen to a still miserly 3.3%. This is the paltry amount that Nancy Pelosi described as “immoral” and that caused moveon.org to claim “health insurance companies are willing to let the bodies pile up as long as their profits are safe.”

Liberals don’t like to let little things like facts get in their way. Profit margins for public companies are freely available and updated daily.  A simple check on finance.yahoo.com allows anyone to validate the immoral profits claim. Which brings us back to the concept of health care as a right. If health care is a right, then any profit is considered immoral. Ultimately, what the Modern Liberal seeks is “single-payer” health care, which means a 100% government run socialized medical system. Any discussion of reform or “public option” is merely an incremental step towards their ultimate goal:

Health care is not a right. Like food, clothing, shelter, automobiles, and x-box 360s, health care is a set of scarce goods and services that people demand and are entitled to consume in a free market according to their ability to pay and the value they place on the service. We have hundreds of years of evidence to prove that the free market is the most efficient mechanism for allocating scare resources. Competition makes profits self-regulating. High demand and rising prices create a market, which brings new providers into the market increasing supply and lowering prices.

We do have real problems in this country with health care. Regulations that restrict insurance companies’ ability to cross state lines artificially reduce competition and supply.  Tax laws that prevent small businesses from deducting employee insurance costs reduce the numbers of insured citizens. Illegal immigration and laws requiring hospitals to provide care to anyone within 250 yards of the emergency room, regardless of the legal status or ability to pay, increase the costs of care for the rest of us and forced the closure of hundreds of ERs. All of these problems are fixable without a massive new entitlement program and without the creation out of whole cloth of a new “right.”

4. Businesses Pay Taxes – Modern Liberals continue to suffer under the delusion that businesses can be taxed. Taxing businesses seems like a good idea. Those evil corporations are making exorbitant profits, at the expense of the little guy, and aren’t paying their fair share. When he was running for office, Obama pledged to tax the “windfall profits” of the oil companies. “I’ll make oil companies like Exxon pay a tax on their windfall profits, and we’ll use the money to help families pay for their skyrocketing energy costs and other bills.” Some of the current health care plans being pushed by Obama include tax increases on employer health benefits. The cap-and-trade plans Obama is pushing are really just tax increases meant to punish the use of fossil fuels.

Politicians often push for business tax increases, because they tend to be popular. Voters think the additional revenues generated by new business taxes are free to them, because they are not directly impacted. Holding up an oil company or a health insurance company as evil sounds good. Why not punish the companies by raising their taxes? It sounds good, but as anyone who has taken economics 101 can tell you, it doesn’t work.

The Truth – Businesses do not pay taxes, they collect them. A business is merely a voluntary association of shareholders, customers, and employees. There exists no business entity apart from these three groups. As such, all taxes come directly from one of them.

Take for example, a mythical business with 1 shareholder, 1 customer, and 1 employee. The company sells 1 widget for $100. The widget costs $90 to produce, of which $50 goes to the employee. The shareholder nets a $10 profit. Now the government decides to “tax the business” 50% of its profits. Who pays? The shareholder could have his net profit decreased by $5, but he probably wouldn’t stand for that. The employee could have his wages cut to $40 to let the shareholder net the same amount, but he probably wouldn’t stand for that either. Or the price of the widget could go up to $110. The customer might or might not be willing to pay the higher price. The reality is probably a combination of the 3 scenarios. The shareholder raises prices a little, accepts a lower short-term income, and restricts future wage increases or reduces staff. In no case, however, has “the business” paid the higher tax.

So what would the net result of the windfall profits tax on oil companies that Obama proposed be? Exxon Mobile is quite a bit more complicated than our mythical company, but the concepts are the same. Obama passes a windfall tax on their profits, the net income to shareholders drops, the company reacts by raising prices and cutting costs, mostly by laying off workers or cutting wages.

Employees, consumers, and shareholders get hurt. And who are the shareholders? Rich fat cat oilmen? Nope. Only .06% of Exxon’s stock is held by insiders (i.e. oil executives). 49% of the company is held by institutional investors, meaning mutual funds, insurance companies, and banks. Those companies are in turn, held by a wide variety of investors. The majority of US citizens own stocks directly, or through their pension plans and 401Ks. Exxon is a member of the Dow Jones Industrial 30, and the Standard & Poors 500, which represent two of the most popular stock indexes. So when Obama says he wants to raise taxes on Exxon, what he really means is he wants to raise taxes on everyone who drives a car or owns an index fund, which in the United States is just about every adult.

As Reagan once said only people pay taxes. “The most dangerous myth is the demagoguery that business can be made to pay a larger share, thus relieving the individual. Politicians preaching this are either deliberately dishonest, or economically illiterate, and either one should scare us. Business doesn’t pay taxes…Only people pay taxes, and people pay as consumers every tax that is assessed against a business…If the tax cannot be included in the price of the product, no one along that line can stay in business.”

Liberals are deliberately attempting to obfuscate the truth. By burdening businesses with taxes, they hope to hide the true impact from the populace.

5. Tax Cuts Cause Deficits - This last myth is the easiest to debunk, because I wrote about it over a year ago. Liberals continue to persist the delusion that tax cuts cause defects. So the myth goes, Clinton ran surpluses because of his tax increases, and Bush destroyed those surpluses by cutting taxes for “the rich.” As an example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report in 2005 claiming that the Bush tax cuts and not spending were the primary contributors to the deficit that year:

The Truth – As I wrote last year, spending and not tax cuts cause deficits. “There is no causal relationship between government services and government revenues. The government confiscates the tax dollars it wants for revenue regardless of the programs offered. If the government cancelled all defense spending in Iraq tomorrow, it would have no effect on the taxes you pay.

Because there is no causal relationship between tax revenues and government expenses, deficits do not result simply because tax rates are cut. Deficits are caused when the government spends more than the incoming revenues.”

The effect of tax cuts on government revenues depends on how high the rate is that is being cut. In the U.S., we have relatively high rates of taxation, putting us squarely on the right hand side of the Laffer Curve. This is why when Bush cut the capital gains tax in 2003, Federal Revenues from the tax doubled by 2006.

Out of control spending is the real cause of deficits. Never has this been better demonstrated that in 2009. Defecits skyrocketed this year to an unprecedented $1,700,000,000,000, but there was no corresponding tax cut to blame. Federal revenues dropped due to the recession, but instead of cutting spending, Obama has ballooned the budget. The results are tragic:

As I wrote last year, this problem transcends political party. When Bush and moderate “compassionate” non-conservatives took office, they spent like drunken sailors. The 2001 budget increased spending 42%. But Obama makes them all look like pikers. He has accelerated the rate of spending to unprecedented levels. Almost $4 trillion dollars. And that is before his attempted take over of the health care system. The Liberals of both parties are mortgaging our future. There is only one solution to the budget mess. Stop spending.