When you hear about how the Obama campaign treats reporters, it’s amazing that the MSM is in his camp.

This morning on the radio a campaign reporter (I didn’t get his name) contrasted Obama with other candidates he has covered while flying with them on their campaign planes. He said that the other candidates (Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Kerry, and McCain) were all very friendly with the press corps and often chatted with them. George W., in particular, seemed to enjoy talking and laughing with them.

In contrast, he said, Obama has never mingled with the reporters on his campaign plane, and the staffers treated them poorly (mostly by ignoring or avoiding them).

I wondered if this reporter was Dean Reynolds, who wrote a revealing From The Road: Reporter’s Notebook post earlier this month, in which he complained about the way reproters were treated by the Obama campain, or just a corroborating witness. (Reynolds took a lot of nasty flak for his posting.)

Update: Yesterday it was reported that reporters for three newspapers who recently endorsed McCain were kicked off O Force One. Maybe the one interviewed on the radio yesterday was one of them, or else a veteran reporter giving an account of campaign planes.

Barack Obama proved he must be a socialist, because he doesn’t know the difference between sharing and taking. 

On Wednesday at a rally in downtown Raleigh, he thought he could ridicule John McCain’s accusation that his tax plan is redistributionist:

McCain has “called me a socialist for wanting to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class,” Obama said. “I don’t know what’s next. By the end of the week he’ll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”

Sharing your toys doesn’t make you communist, but the opposite. It makes you compassionate. Or at least it may mean you’re rational, if the playmate you shared with has a toy you’d like to play with in return. The essential of a free market. 

But if his kindergarten teacher had taken some of Barack’s toys away from him and distributed them to other children, then his teacher would be a socialist. Socialists don’t like markets because they operate outside the state, using resources the state would like under its control.

And if Barack had cried about his toys being taken away, and his teacher punished him for “not sharing,” that would make his teacher a communist. “Secret” communists use the term compassion when they mean compulsion.

So which is he? A secret socialist or a secret communist? I hope we don’t have to find out.

Some studies have suggested that Obama’s polls are benefiting from the market meltdown.

Other studies have shown an inverse correlation between Obama’s poll numbers and the Dow index – suggesting an “Obama Discount” which reflects investors’ pessimism toward the economy under an Obama administration. Today’s steep decline the day after the NBC/WSJ Poll showing a widening edge for Obama would support this theory.

Interesting. Since these theories do not contradict, they could both be valid. And if both are valid, then one could synergize the other, causing steeper declines.

The title of this post may seem an oxymoron, but it describes an actual situation, and is the center of the two candidates’ tax proposals.

Obama says that his plan would “cut” taxes for 95% of Americans, or those earning less than $250,000  (adjusted gross income, presumably, but they haven’t specified.)

McCain supporters (but not him or his campaign, oddly) say that 40% of earners don’t pay federal income taxes at all, so how do you “cut” from zero? Well, by receiving credits, they reply.

Credits? But aren’t credits really income redistribution, or more precisely, welfare? The Obamen prefer to use the terms already in the tax code, which don’t include such socialist descriptors as “redistribution” or ”welfare”, which are not the purpose of the income tax, and disquieting concepts to everyone but the hard left, who are perfectly happy using the tax code to achieve social ends, and not just to raise revenue.

Thus, during the VP debates, Joe Biden flatly objected to the term “redistribution” used by Sarah Palin. But what else would you call it? Do we need another “lipstick on a pig” metaphor? Maybe she should have said “spread the wealth” as Obama did in response to Joe the Plumber.

The tax code already has an earned income tax credit (EITC) provision, which accomplished the same purpose proposed by Obama, except for a far smaller number of filers than now proposed. Presumably, Obama’s plan would greatly expand the EITC, and “pay” for it by making the code more steeply progressive than it already is. (So much for tax reform.)

(Incidentally, Milton Friedman proposed a “negative income tax” decades ago as a replacement for welfare. It’s hard to conceive of him endorsing Obama’s expansion of this concept into refundable credits for 10 million filers.)

Early opponents of the EITC feared it would expand to earners above the poverty level and into the lower middle class, just as opponents of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), intended to prevent the highest income earners from taking advantage of deductions, feared would affect upper middle class earners.

In both cases, the fears were correct. The nearly 40% of earners who pay no federal income tax will become beneficiaries of an equivalent to the EITC under Obama’s plan. And at the top end, four million filers wil be subject to the AMT. 

But to a more important point — will the new expanded class of “untaxed” taxpayers really benefit? Consider:

(1) To “pay” for the new credits, Obama will increase taxes on those who earn more than $250,000. Since many small businesses are in this class (since they file taxes as individuals), the McCain campaign has pointed out that targeting the “rich” and corporations will actually weaken the job-creating engine of the economy and not bring in the revenue needed.

(3) Readers of this blog know that corporations don’t pay taxes — people do. To a business, taxes are a cost which must be borne by the owners (or shareholders), the employees, and the customers.

(4) Everybody, regardless of income, relies on businesses for all of their basic needs. It’s estimated that 60 cents of every dollar spent goes toward taxes in one form or another.

In light of the above, how does Obama’s plan cut taxes for anyone? Answer: the plan can only raise costs for everyone, as well as eliminate jobs at those businesess which will become insolvent under the extra costs for new health care mandates and increased taxes.