by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n Katie Couric and the New Populism<\/strong><\/p>\n With all the talk of corporate greed and inequality, did people like Katie Couric think that in tough times they were immune from the laws of populist outrage? Did Couric believe that, amid significant layoffs at CBS, she could still garner pay worth 200 salaries of $75,000 in the new age of egalitarianism? What’s next? When movies bomb, will actors’ pay be presented in terms of how many cameramen could have been hired with their payouts?<\/p>\n What’s interesting is that Obama’s egalitarian “J’accuse!” movement was largely supported by those who \u2014 logically, at least \u2014 were precisely the individuals Obama was railing against: people earning more than $200,000 a year who make x-times more than their lowly coworkers.<\/p>\n So, given the new mood of the country and the new tax codes on the horizon, can we expect law professors, actors, media celebs, and others gladly to pay 65 percent of their ill-gotten gains in state taxes, federal income taxes, new payroll taxes, and healthcare taxes? And can we start asking the tough questions? For example: Why do endowed professors teach fewer classroom hours than part-timers who make one-fifth their wages?<\/p>\n Somehow, Obamaism convinced many that they were avatars of needed change, unlike the greedy “them,” and thus were exempt from the logical consequences of their own rhetoric. The problem, however, is that Obama’s most influential base of support is “them.” This could catch on. Imagine the possibilities: John Edwards sells his “two Americas” mansion. Al Gore gives his energy-guzzling estate over to poor environmental activists. Warren Buffet forsakes the esoteric deductions that gave him an 18 percent income-tax rate and happily starts paying 60 percent of his income as his “fair share.” Bill and Melinda Gates hold back $20 billion or so from the foundation and give it to a broke treasury desperately in need of estate-tax revenue.<\/p>\n Confessions of Another Middle-Class Terrorist<\/strong><\/p>\n In the post\u2013Major Hasan\/Abdulmutallab era, we don’t often hear the once-popular canard that poverty, oppression, and genuine grievances drive victimized Muslims \u2014 especially in the West \u2014 into the ranks of radical Islamic terrorism.<\/p>\n But the latest yuppie terrorist \u2014 Omar Hammami, the Alabaman who went to Somalia to kill non-believers and rant about the evil America that nourished him \u2014 is more candid than most. In a recent\u00a0New York Times Magazine<\/em>piece,\u00a0Hammami\u00a0is quoted as rejecting the claim that socioeconomic factors drove his own murderous extremism: “They can’t blame it on poverty or any of that stuff. They will have to realize that it’s an ideology and it’s a way of life that make people change. They will also have to realize that their political agendas need to be fixed.”<\/p>\n A Dream Fulfilled?<\/strong><\/p>\n When Obama gives the usual review of all the programs, stimulus efforts, and new entitlements he’s overseeing, almost no one seems to conclude that he is simply detailing how he is going to redistribute nearly $2 trillion a year in annual borrowing. When we cut through all the soaring Great Society rhetoric, we are left with a “Gorge the Beast” strategy in which money is borrowed and given to favored constituencies before being paid back by less popular groups through higher taxes.<\/p>\n Given the aggregate $7-10 trillion in additional debt envisioned over the next four years, Obama may well become the greatest redistributor in U.S. history, at last addressing his 2001 lamentation about the absence of meaningful “redistributive change” in America. The only question at this point is whether Obama’s gargantuan deficits are aimed primarily at lavishing constituencies with cash, or rather at making it necessary to raise taxes in a way that serves to reduce income inequality.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner Katie Couric and the New Populism With all the talk of corporate greed and inequality, did people like Katie Couric think that in tough times they were immune from the laws of populist outrage?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[609],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-tQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3217,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-it-all-that-bad\/","url_meta":{"origin":1850,"position":0},"title":"Is It All That Bad?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 22, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Some openings for Obama 1) Iraq. Far fewer American soldiers died in combat in Iraq over the last forty days than were murdered in Obama\u2019s Chicago during the commensurate period. So now Obama can claim the Petraeus plan as his own, accept the gradual\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2008"","block_context":{"text":"November 2008","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2008\/november-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9337,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/journalism-r-i-p\/","url_meta":{"origin":1850,"position":1},"title":"Journalism, R. I. P.","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 13, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"By definition, progressives cannot be guilty of bias. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online For a variety of historical and cultural reasons, most of those who work in the media are progressives. They believe that government must undertake to fix an array of social maladies, such as income\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1893,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/conservative-felonies-liberal-misdemeanors\/","url_meta":{"origin":1850,"position":2},"title":"Conservative Felonies, Liberal Misdemeanors","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Why in matters of stupid behavior do liberals and Democrats often get second and third chances from the media and general public not accorded to their conservative and Republican counterparts? We're seeing it now in the national reaction to Senate Majority Leader Harry\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4065,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-loud-passing-of-the-old-order\/","url_meta":{"origin":1850,"position":3},"title":"The Loud Passing of the Old Order","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services American reality has been turned upside down in just 20 years. Americans no longer count on their news to be filtered and shaped by the Associated Press or the\u00a0New York Times. 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