Tonight is the State of the Union address and no doubt we'll be hearing a lot about taxing the rich, fairness, etc.  What the President probably won't mention is that the United States has gone 1,000 days since the Senate passed a budget for our country..... 

FRAMING THE ISSUE SERIES - 2012 Battle Lines - Part II

Even to the casual observer, it is apparent that we in the United States are in a time during which national public policy agreement on most substantive issues is difficult to achieve.  Further, we notice that our Federally-elected officials find it impractical to reach agreement on even basic legislation governing the finances of the Government.  We have submitted in these pages that the reason for this impasse is that a chasm has opened within the electorate between competing visions for the Country and the Federal Government's role in it.  We further assert that between these competing visions compromise is impossible.  We assert that we must choose.  In a several-part series of Framing the Issue, we now explore the Battle Lines.

Free-Market Capitalism vs. Crony Capitalism

The social populists have been consistent in pointing out income and wealth disparities.  They like to cite Crony Capitalism (meaning the grant of special favors and advantages by the government to a specific person or group, i.e. picking the winners and the losers) as a central reason.  The attempt is to allege fairly directly that most people with wealth came by it wrongly.  This sophistry is handy to the "Lean Forward" crowd as it lays the groundwork for confiscatory taxation of wealth.  While there is little doubt that some among the top quartile in wealth may have come by their winnings wrongly, it is more correct to assert that almost all of the top quartile have come by their wealth substantially upright in the eyes of both law and mores.  Thus, the allegation must be about something else.