reflectivepundit

Advice to Golf Star Phil Mickelson: Forget about Golf, Join the Tea Party

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Phil Mickelson used to be one of my favorite golf professionals. I like his style of play.  I rooted for him.

Yesterday, he lost me as a fan.

Not because of his less than stellar performance in his first golf tournament of the year but because of what he said during a post-tournament interview at the Humana Challenge at Palm Springs.

Mickelson, one of the country’s best known, most popular and richest golfers, complained about today’s “political landscape in the United States” and let it be known that he is contemplating retirement because of his higher tax rates this year. 

According to the New York Times, Mickelson whined, “If you add up all the federal and you look at the disability and the unemployment and the Social Security and state, my tax rate is 62, 63 percent. So I’ve got to make some decisions on what to do.”

Later this week, Mickelson promised reporters, he will talk in more detail about his high tax burden at the tournament at Torrey Pines. Perhaps he plans to bring a tax expert to explain how he arrives at the alleged “62, 63 percent rates.

Forget about moaning some more, Mickelson. Put your golf clubs up for sale. Join forces with the GOP’s Tea Party wing that fights tooth and nail against modest tax increases for the wealthiest and rather sticks low and middle income groups as well as programs for the poorest among us.

Yes, according to the recent “fiscal cliff” agreements, Mickelson’s top tax rate will go up from 35% to 39.6%, and long-term capital gains and certain dividends from 15% to 20%. He will also pay somewhat more in self-employment payroll tax and a newly introduced California’s millionaire tax.

Big deal.

According to Forbes, this guy made about $44 million last year in tournament earnings and endorsements; he has a net worth of $180 million.

Last week, after a long off-season, Mickelson played not his best golf, was tied for 37^th place and still collected $22,400 for four days of hitting the golf ball.

Does this “over-taxed” golf star have any idea about the incomes of most Americans who work hard every day and have far less leisure time than he?

Does he have any idea how long most people work to earn what he made in price money on Sunday for a four-day work week?

Obviously not.

I love playing golf. I love watching golf. But I will no longer root for Phil Mickelson.

The Shame of a Nation (III): Spineless GOP Does Not Stand Up to Gun-Nuts and the 2. Amendment Myth

By Brigitte L. Nacos

For a moment or two after the mass shooting in Newtown before Christmas I thought that this was a real opportunity to counter the glut of assault weapons in the hands of millions of Americans. Who in heaven would not support reasonable regulations in a nation with far more handguns and far more shooting victims than any other comparable democracy?

I wasn’t naïve enough to think that the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the gun industry that fills the NRA’s coffers would change their tune. But in the face of 20 little boys and girls mowed down by a lone gunman in a short shooting spree I hoped for some leaders in the ranks of the Republican Party to ignore the pressures and threats from the gun lobby and its fanatical followers in the militia and Tea Party movements.

It is now clear that I was wrong. Very wrong.

Yesterday, after President Obama introduced his comprehensive but altogether modest gun regulation proposals,  the chairman of the National Republican Committee (NRC) Reince Priebus issued a statement that called the president’s initiative “an executive power grab” and criticized that Obama “paid lip service to our fundamental constitutional rights, but took actions that disregard the 2nd Amendment and the legislative process.”

As head of the NRC Priebus speaks for the GOP. He is the closest to what one would consider the Republican Party’s current leader. And what his comments boil down to is a sanitized version of what the paranoid wingnuts post on their web sites.

There has not been one Republican in the Congress who has refuted Priebus or those colleagues in their midst whose hate speech endears them to the gun rights fanatics. Not even in the face of those who talk about Obama’s impeachment; and not even in response to those who allude to a new revolutionary or civil war—the very nonsense dominant in far-right cyberspace communications.  

This is what Tea Party darling and 2016 GOP presidential hopeful Rand Paul said even before Obama had introduced his gun regulation plan:

"I'm against having a king.  I think having a monarch is what we fought the American Revolution over and someone who wants to bypass the Constitution, bypass Congress--that's someone who wants to act like a king or a monarch. I've been opposed to executive orders, even with Republican presidents. But one that wants to infringe on the Second Amendment, we will fight tooth and nail.”

Tooth and nail? Sounds like the call to arms in the virtual echo chamber of the militia and Tea Party milieu.