Jul 28
Philosophically, the government already claims an excessive and an ever increasing amount of our hard earned money through multifarious taxes that are not limited to income taxes. Their profligate spending is partially fueled by our representatives’ knowledge that there can and will be more money collected and more ways to obtain it from us.
This must be stopped! Enough of our spendthrift, profligate government. Much more of this money should remain with us rather than be wasted on pork or pet projects that allow these government officials to have their name plastered on some building or institution, or to be transferred to those who are irresponsible and lazy but feel that it is their right to share in the American dream. (You know these individuals: they use food stamps to buy liquor and cigarettes and their money to buy iPods, iPhones, $200 sneakers, cell phones, tattoos and gold onlays for their teeth while having numerous children by countless and nameless partners.)
We must use all means possible to let our representatives know that we want the Bush tax “cuts” to remain in effect. If they are allowed to expire, the government will be taking billions of additional dollars more from us each year – which is on top of Obama’s new taxes for healthcare.
Remember Nov. 2nd.
The Tax Tsunami On The Horizon
Investors Business Daily 07/21/2010
Fiscal Policy: Many voters are looking forward to 2011, hoping a new Congress will put the country back on the right track. But unless something's done soon, the new year will also come with a raft of tax hikes — including a return of the death tax — that will be real killers.
Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.
But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.
Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn't the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it's not just the rich who will pay.
The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.
But the damage doesn't stop there.
The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.
Both the cap-gains and dividend taxes will go up further in 2013 as the health care reform adds a 3.8% Medicare levy for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than $250,000.
Other tax hikes include: halving the child tax credit to $500 from $1,000 and fixing the standard deduction for couples at the same level as it is for single filers.
Letting the Bush cuts expire will cost taxpayers $115 billion next year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and $2.6 trillion through 2020.
But even more tax headaches lie ahead. This "second wave" of hikes, as Americans for Tax Reform puts it, are designed to pay for ObamaCare and include:
The Medicine Cabinet Tax. Americans, says ATR, "will no longer be able to use health savings account, flexible spending account, or health reimbursement pretax dollars to purchase nonprescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin)."
The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. "This provision of ObamaCare," according to ATR, "increases the additional tax on nonmedical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10% to 20%, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10%."
Brand Name Drug Tax. Makers and importers of brand-name drugs will be liable for a tax of $2.5 billion in 2011. The tax goes to $3 billion a year from 2012 to 2016, then $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018.
Beginning in 2019 it falls to $2.8 billion and stays there. And who pays the new drug tax? Patients, in the form of higher prices.
Economic Substance Doctrine. ATR reports that "The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks 'economic substance.'"
A third and final (for now) wave, says ATR, consists of the alternative minimum tax's widening net, tax hikes on employers and the loss of deductions for tuition:
• The Tax Policy Center, no right-wing group, says that the failure to index the AMT will subject 28.5 million families to the tax when they file next year, up from 4 million this year.
• "Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly deduct, or 'depreciate') equipment purchases up to $250,000," says ATR. "This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be 'depreciated.'"
• According to ATR, there are "literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place," plus the loss of some tax credits. The research and experimentation tax credit will be the biggest loss, "but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs."
• The deduction for tuition and fees will no longer be available and there will be limits placed on education tax credits. Teachers won't be able to deduct their classroom expenses and employer-provided educational aid will be restricted. Thousands of families will no longer be allowed to deduct student loan interest.
Then there's the tax on Americans who decline to buy health care insurance (the tax the administration initially said wasn't a tax but now argues in court that it is) plus a 3.8% Medicare tax beginning in 2013 on profits made in real estate transactions by wealthier Americans.
Not all Americans may fully realize what's in store come Jan. 1. But they should have a pretty good idea by the mid-term elections, and members of Congress might take note of our latest IBD/TIPP Poll (summarized above).
Fifty-one percent of respondents favored making the Bush cuts permanent vs. 28% who didn't. Republicans were more than 4 to 1 and Independents more than 2 to 1 in favor. Only Democrats were opposed, but only by 40%-38%.
The cuts also proved popular among all income groups — despite the Democrats' oft-heard assertion that Bush merely provided "tax breaks for the wealthy." Fact is, Bush cut taxes for everyone who paid them, and the cuts helped the nation recover from a recession and the worst stock-market crash since 1929.
Maybe, just maybe, Americans remember that — and will not forget come Nov. 2.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/541131/201007211841/The-Tax-Tsunami-On-The-Horizon.aspx
Posted in George W. Bush Government spending Obama ObamaCare Tax Taxes Wealth redistribution with No Comments
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Jun 6
To no one’s surprise, the total theorized costs of Obamacare are continuing to increase years before the first patient is planned to be seen under the system. That is, if the nationalized healthcare fraud doesn’t die a quick death beforehand from strangulation by defunding or repealing. The whole process was interminably corrupt and opaque in order to be able to pass it against the vociferous opposition of a large majority of Americans.
Just to implement one of their ideological linchpins.
Fiscal Fraud of Obamacare Snowballing Already
Terence P. Jeffrey 6/02/2010
Remember the health care issue? Well, the fiscal consequences of the socialized medicine scheme enacted by President Barack Obama and Congress just two months ago are already beginning to snowball.
Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, was one of the key architects and advocates of Obamacare. He was back on the House floor on Friday delivering an urgent plea to fellow Democrats that inadvertently -- or, perhaps, unavoidably -- revealed the fraudulent nature of our new national health care regime.
It was supposed to save the taxpayers money, remember?
"This legislation will lower costs for families and for businesses and for the federal government, reducing our deficit by over $1 trillion in the next two decades," Obama said when he signed the bill.
On Friday, Waxman declared that the sky is about to fall on the Medicare system. He went to the House floor to "urge" his colleagues to vote for a bill that includes $102 billion in new federal spending and would add $54 billion to the national debt over the next 10 years -- $25 billion of it in the few months remaining in this fiscal year.
Why did Waxman believe this new borrowing-and-spending was necessary?
"It's absolutely critical to do this if we are going to keep doctors in Medicare and keep the promise to Medicare beneficiaries that they will have access to physicians' services," said Waxman. "This provision will provide a moderate increase in physicians' fees, 2.2 percent for the rest of the year. If we don't act, doctors' fees will be cut by 21 percent from where they are today. This would be unconscionable."
It would not merely be unconscionable. If the 21-percent cut in Medicare fees for doctors -- that, in fact, legally took effect on June 1 -- is allowed to stand, many doctors in this country will simply stop seeing Medicare patients. They will not be able to afford it. The cost to them of serving their patients will exceed what they are paid. Their profit margin will be swept away.
To make precisely this point, 12 national surgeons' associations -- including the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons and the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery -- sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter last Wednesday warning her what would happen if Medicare doctors' fees are slashed as they are scheduled to be under current law.
"These continued payment cuts, rising practice costs and a lack of certainty going forward, make it difficult, if not impossible, for already financially challenged surgical practices to continue to treat Medicare patients," the surgeons' associations told Pelosi.
The letter pointed the speaker toward the results of a survey of more than 13,000 physicians done in February by the Surgical Coalition, a group of more than 20 medical associations. The survey asked these doctors what they would do if Medicare fees were slashed by the scheduled 21.2 percent.
Twenty-nine percent said they would opt out of the Medicare system entirely. Almost 69 percent said they would limit the number of appointments they would take from Medicare patients, 45.8 percent said they would start referring complex Medicare patients to other physicians, 45.3 percent said they would stop providing certain services, 43.8 percent said they would defer purchasing new medical equipment and 42.7 percent said they would cut their staff.
Almost 4 percent of the doctors said they would close or sell their practices.
Why did Congress plan to slash the doctors' Medicare fees in the first place? It didn't. In the past, the majority in Congress has routinely enacted budget bills that fraudulently assumed that on some future date the federal government would dramatically slash the Medicare fees paid to doctors, knowing that before that date arrived the majority would pass "emergency" legislation postponing the cuts to some still-future date. The majority in Congress does this so the long-term deficits caused by their spending bills appear to be smaller than they actually are.
As originally proposed, Obamacare would have ended this practice, permanently setting Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors at the true anticipated level. But the Congressional Budget Office determined that doing so would have added $208 billion to the cost of Obamacare over 10 years, forcing the CBO to declare that Obamacare added to the deficit rather than reduced it. That would have cost Obamacare votes on the House floor and quite possibly defeated the legislation.
So the congressional leadership stripped the "doc fix" out of Obamacare and left it to another day.
Waxman went down to the floor last Friday to declare that day had come. Unfortunately, for him, the Senate had already left town for its Memorial Day vacation. So, the current fix will have to wait until it returns.
Even then, the fix only accounts for $22.9 billion of the $102 billion cost of the bill the House did pass on Friday. Most of the rest of the money is for extending unemployment benefits and special targeted tax breaks.
The $22.9 billion fix for the doctors' fees -- if passed by the Senate -- would only last through September 2011. Then Congress will presumably do it all again -- or let the Medicare system collapse.
In the meantime, Obamacare is supposed to cut half a trillion in spending from elsewhere in Medicare, while Obama's budget -- not counting the $54 billion in new debt included in this bill -- is expected to add $9.8 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=37301
Posted in Democrat Government spending Healthcare Henry Waxman Medicare Medicare Obama Obama ObamaCare Physicians Tax Taxes with No Comments
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16
California is a paradigm of where Obama and Congressional Democrats are hijacking the rest of the country to. Massive unsustainable spending, oppressive but still rising taxes, gargantuan debt, bloated but ever enlarging government, strangulating regulations and red tape, business and employment unfriendly environment and intrusive government.
All of these are manifestations of years subjected to the unfettered and irresponsible actions of Progressives/Liberals. It now seems, California is at the edge of the abyss … and looking back at the rapidly approaching country as a whole.
We must not go there!
Sunset In Taxifornia?
Investors Business Daily 05/12/2010
Deficits: We've been hard on Arnold Schwarzenegger in recent months, but we're foursquare behind the California governor in his effort to balance the state's budget without raising taxes.
The Golden State's $18.6 billion budget deficit, the nation's largest, is the result of uncontrolled spending by the state's Democrat-controlled legislature — nothing else. Yet the very same Democratic legislators are pushing for tax increases in the middle of the state's worst downturn since World War II — and only a year after passing a $12.5 billion tax hike to boost revenue.
To call this foolish would be the understatement of the year. So we were glad to hear that Schwarzenegger will include steep spending cuts in the budget plan he'll release this week.
"We don't believe that raising taxes right now is the right thing to do," said the governator's spokesman Aaron McLear.
He's right. California's deficit is not only gargantuan, it's getting worse. In April, the state income tax month, revenue came in 26% below expectations at $3.6 billion — despite last year's tax hikes.
Democrats' answer to this isn't cutting back after years of profligacy. They want a new 10% severance tax on oil production, higher taxes on commercial property and a repeal of corporate tax breaks passed last year to help create jobs.
These are the kinds of policies that have driven California's economy into a ditch. Its jobless rate of 12.6% is among the nation's highest, and it has the lowest credit rating of any state.
Companies are fleeing a business-unfriendly environment created by years of leftist legislation that has taken the state from first to worst in terms of job creation. Recent studies call California's tax policies the worst in the nation. The Pacific Research Institute, a think tank, not-so-tongue-in-cheek calls the state "Taxi-fornia."
Job relocation specialist Joe Vranich counts 112 major companies since June 2009 that have either moved or opened new facilities in other states — costing California thousands of jobs. The most recent emigrant was none other than Northrop Grumman, which is moving its global headquarters to Northern Virginia.
"It's no mystery what causes companies to leave California," said Vranich. "High taxes, undue regulation, workers' comp costs, a legal environment stacked against businesses, and lengthy and costly construction-permitting requirements."
Each week, some 3,000 middle-class workers and entrepreneurs move elsewhere, recent estimates show. Some 1.4 million have left already.
If Schwarzenegger wins this fight, it could mark a defining shift toward fiscal sanity. If not, and taxes and regulations surge anew, California's darkest days will still lie ahead.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=533862
Posted in California Democrat Government spending Ideology Liberal Obama Progressives Socialism US Debt with No Comments
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May 12
This is the road Obama is taking America down:
If Obama succeeds in his socialist, bankrupting, reckless spending policies this is where we will be subsequently heading:
Posted in Government spending Ideology Obama Political Cartoon US Debt with No Comments
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May 6
In a similar underhanded way as in the healthcare reform legislation, Congressional Democrats are inserting regulations into the proposed financial reform bill that have absolutely no relevance to it. This is just another depraved and clandestine power grab by the federal government to abrogate more of our rights because if they were proposed in an open and honest manner tremendous public outrage would result.
In this case, it involves granting the FTC powerful control over the internet and beyond what the FCC could regulate. Such added control must be stopped and stripped from the contemplated legislation.
Why does the Wall Street regulation overhaul give FTC authority over the Internet?
Ed Morrissey May 1, 2010
Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported on another little Easter egg in a bill cruising through Congress that would normally have followed Nancy Pelosi’s policy of discovery ex post facto. Democrats have pushed hard to get the financial-regulation reform bill unstuck in the Senate, mainly playing on class-warfare themes in painting the GOP as the party of eeeeeeevil Wall Street robber barons. However, the House version of the bill contains provisions that would put the Federal Trade Commission in position to start issuing rules on Internet transactions that would not only slow down business growth but also have no relevance at all to the financial collapse that prompted the bill:
The Federal Trade Commission could become a more powerful watchdog for Internet users under a little-known provision in financial overhaul legislation that would expand the agency’s ability to create rules.
An emboldened FTC would stand in stark contrast to a besieged Federal Communications Commission, whose ability to oversee broadband providers has been cast into doubt after a federal court ruled last month that the agency lacked the ability to punish Comcast for violating open-Internet guidelines.
The version of regulatory overhaul legislation passed by the House would allow the FTC to issue rules on a fast track and permit the agency to impose civil penalties on companies that hurt consumers. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz has argued in favor of bolstering his agency’s enforcement ability. …
Major media, telecom and cable companies stand to win or lose greatly from changes at the FTC and FCC. For example, a proposed rule at the FCC would force carriers to treat all Web traffic equally on their networks. That has drawn sharp opposition from broadband service providers, who would prefer that Congress mandate such a change. Comcast has complained that some traffic is so heavy that it slows the entire system.
The proposal to expand the FTC’s authority has sparked a flurry of lobbying by advertisers, industry groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which are seeking to block it citing concerns about possible overreach by the agency.
This has become a pattern with this Congress and administration. Despite having large majorities in both chambers, Democrats refuse to use the legislative path to pass regulation — mainly because the regulations they want are too radical to pass. Instead, they shift the creation of regulation to agencies like the EPA and its “endangerment” finding for CO2, which would then require Congress and the President to undo rather than vote to impose in the first place.
Even considering that pattern, this is something out of the ordinary. Neither the FTC nor the Internet had anything to do with the Wall Street meltdown in 2008. If this financial-regulation bill is so desperately needed, why did House Democrats lard it up with this power grab at the FTC? Why does the FTC need any further authority over the Internet, where fraud and abuse regulations apply already? The Internet economy has been one of the bright spots throughout a dismal period of recent history. Do we need to attack the one area that shows growth and promise?
Nancy Pelosi knows that her Democratic majorities won’t last much longer. She wants to leave behind a Byzantine structure of unaccountable bureaucrats and embedded power to accomplish what she can’t get through the legitimate processes of lawmaking, and she’s hiding those efforts in so-called emergency legislation. Keep an eye on this during the conference committee on the financial-regulation bill; it’s not in the Senate version, but will almost certainly reappear in the conference report.
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/05/01/why-does-the-wall-street-regulation-overhaul-give-ftc-authority-over-the-internet/
Posted in Congress Democrat Financial Government Control with 2 Comments
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Apr 21
Obama and Congress are seriously considering imposing a value added tax or VAT on us and that should be a severe cause for alarm. The last thing we need is to be burdened with another tax. Or, more to the point, the government has taken enough of our money and it is time to say:
NO MORE!
VAT is an oppressive and to some extent hidden tax which makes it easier for the government to levy it and then relentlessly raise it. And when the government has more of our money they find that it’s never enough – so they spend even more than they collect. Ad infinitum.
This VAT has helped create the stagnation and miasma of indolence in Europe and we must make sure that it is never implemented here.
VAT Will Spell Anything But Relief
Investors Business Daily 04/08/2010
Taxes: Asked why he robbed banks, thief Willie Sutton famously replied: "That's where the money is." The same logic is now being used by the White House as it floats the idea of a broad new tax on all consumption.
White House adviser and former Fed chief Paul Volcker, one of the most respected men on Wall Street, broached the delicate topic of taxes Tuesday.
In his remarks, he said a value-added tax "was not as toxic an idea" as it had been in the past, and suggested it might be a way for the U.S. to escape its growing budget crisis.
"If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes," he said.
No doubt this is a trial balloon. Based on the $10 trillion in budget deficits expected over the next 10 years, this is one crisis the White House won't want to waste, as Rahm Emanuel would say.
Already, it's waged open war on the rich — vowing to take as much from those having $200,000 in income as it can. The 10-year budget plan submitted by President Obama in fact hits that group with $636 billion in new taxes.
But that's not even close to being enough to pay for the Democrats' reckless expansion of government.
As we've noted here before, Obama's new budget spends $45 trillion from 2011 to 2020. That's a 70% rise in spending from the previous decade. The only problem is, we're expected to collect only $35 trillion in taxes — and even that might be an overestimate, based on recent dismal economic growth.
So just going after the rich can't close that gap. The wealthy literally don't have the money. And even if we raised income taxes on everyone, which is highly unlikely, we would have to double current income tax rates to balance the budget, according to a recent Tax Foundation study.
So with deficits averaging $1 trillion a year through 2020 and spending soaring, where will the money come from?
Answer: A VAT. Only a VAT will give the government enough money to let it continue its out-of-control spending — which now seems to be the Democrats' main political goal.
Right now, the poor and the middle class pay virtually no taxes at all. In 2008, 49% of all households paid no taxes, new data show.
Those who had no tax liability at all receive about $70 billion in benefits and cash a year. In effect, for many, tax day has become an opportunity to collect a giant welfare check.
Yet, despite Obama's pledge that those with incomes below $200,000 wouldn't see their taxes raised "one dime," the fact is, they're the ultimate target of a VAT.
Yes, Obama is giving them lots of goodies. But he and the Democrats in charge of Congress know they'll have to tax the poor and the middle class to create the cradle-to-grave welfare state they so desperately want. It's the dream of all so-called progressives.
And it's already happening. In the health care takeover just signed into law, there are 13 new taxes — many of which will hit the poor and the middle class.
Still, that's penny-ante stuff. A VAT, as used in 150 countries around the world, would be a real money gusher — a Trojan horse for tax hikes on all Americans, especially the poor and middle class.
A VAT, remember, is really a tax on consumption. And since the poor and middle class spend a much greater ratio of their incomes on consumption than the wealthy, they'll bear the brunt.
A recent report from the liberal Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center said: "A major concern with a VAT is that it could be regressive, raising tax burdens proportionately more on lower income than on higher income taxpayers."
Even so, many Democrats point favorably to the European Union's welfare states, where VATs as high as 20% have long been a staple of public finance. The U.S., these critics suggest, would do well to imitate our EU friends.
Or not.
As the Cato Institute's Daniel Mitchell recently noted, "real-world evidence shows that VATs are strongly linked with both higher overall tax burdens and more government spending."
Indeed, in 1965, just before the EU adopted the VAT broadly, the average EU tax burden was about 28%, vs. 25% in the U.S.
By 2006, the EU tax burden was 40% — compared with 28% in the U.S.
The VAT tax grew and grew and grew. But Europe's economies didn't. Now, thanks to too much government and excessive taxation, the EU is almost hopelessly behind the U.S. in terms of both innovation and productivity. Is that the future we want?
No. The VAT's a terrible idea. It would bring higher taxes, slower growth, fewer jobs and lower standards of living. But it would do one thing well: give bureaucrats a lot more of your money to spend.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=529800
Posted in Congress Democrat Economy Federal tax returns Government spending Obama Taxes VAT with No Comments
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Apr 9
Many people consider Obama to be the anti-Christ which that we were warned about and this may or may not be true. However, he surely is the anti-Christ with regard to his unalloyed fiscal irresponsibility as relates to the reckless costs of Obamacare which are placing the United States on the precipice of bankruptcy. Obama is also the anti-Reagan.
In the following cogent editorial, Charles Krauthammer elucidates a possible partial solution to the unpaid for healthcare costs: imposition of a value added tax. It is his strong assertion that such a national sales tax will be inevitable unless Obamacare is revoked. If this indeed comes to fruition, our future and that of our progeny looks bleak.
The VAT Cometh
Charles Krauthammer 3/26/2010
WASHINGTON -- As the night follows the day, the VAT cometh.
With the passage of Obamacare, creating a vast new middle-class entitlement, a national sales tax of the kind near-universal in Europe is inevitable.
We are now $8 trillion in debt. The Congressional Budget Office projects that another $12 trillion will be added over the next decade. Obamacare, when stripped of its budgetary gimmicks -- the unfunded $200 billion-plus doctor fix, the double counting of Medicare cuts, the 10-6 sleight-of-hand (counting 10 years of revenue and only 6 years of outflows) -- is at minimum a $2 trillion new entitlement.
It will vastly increase the debt. But even if it were revenue-neutral, Obamacare pre-empts and appropriates for itself the best and easiest means of reducing the existing deficit. Obamacare's $500 billion of cuts in Medicare and $600 billion in tax hikes are no longer available for deficit reduction. They are siphoned off for the new entitlement of insuring the uninsured.
This is fiscally disastrous because, as President Obama himself explained last year in unveiling his grand transformational policies, our unsustainable fiscal path requires control of entitlement spending, the most ruinous of which is out-of-control health care costs.
Obamacare was sold on the premise that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, "health care reform is entitlement reform. Our budget cannot take this upward spiral of cost." But the bill enacted on Tuesday accelerates the spiral: It radically expands Medicaid (adding 15 million new recipients/dependents) and shamelessly raids Medicare by spending on a new entitlement the $500 billion in cuts and the yield from the Medicare tax hikes.
Obama knows that the debt bomb is looming, that Moody's is warning that the Treasury's AAA rating is in jeopardy, that we are headed for a run on the dollar and/or hyperinflation if nothing is done.
Hence his deficit reduction commission. It will report (surprise!) after the November elections.
What will it recommend? What can it recommend? Sure, Social Security can be trimmed by raising the retirement age, introducing means testing and changing the indexing formula from wage growth to price inflation.
But this won't be nearly enough. As Obama has repeatedly insisted, the real money is in health care costs -- which are now locked in place by the new Obamacare mandates.
That's where the value-added tax comes in. For the politician, it has the virtue of expediency: People are used to sales taxes, and this one produces a river of revenue. Every 1 percent of VAT would yield up to $1 trillion a decade (depending on what you exclude -- if you exempt food, for example, the yield would be more like $900 billion).
It's the ultimate cash cow. Obama will need it. By introducing universal health care, he has pulled off the largest expansion of the welfare state in four decades. And the most expensive. Which is why all of the European Union has the VAT. Huge VATs. Germany: 19 percent. France and Italy: 20 percent. Most of Scandinavia: 25 percent.
American liberals have long complained that ours is the only advanced industrial country without universal health care.
Well, now we shall have it. And as we approach European levels of entitlements, we will need European levels of taxation.
Obama set out to be a consequential president, on the order of Ronald Reagan. With the VAT, Obama's triumph will be complete. He will have succeeded in reversing Reaganism. Liberals have long complained that Reagan's strategy was to starve the (governmental) beast in order to shrink it: First, cut taxes -- then ultimately you have to reduce government spending.
Obama's strategy is exactly the opposite: Expand the beast, and then feed it. Spend first -- which then forces taxation. Now that, with the institution of universal health care, we are becoming the full entitlement state, the beast will have to be fed.
And the VAT is the only trough in creation large enough.
As a substitute for the income tax, the VAT would be a splendid idea. Taxing consumption makes infinitely more sense than taxing work. But to feed the liberal social-democratic project, the VAT must be added on top of the income tax.
Ultimately, even that won't be enough. As the population ages and health care becomes increasingly expensive, the only way to avoid fiscal ruin (as Britain, for example, has discovered) is health care rationing.
It will take a while to break the American populace to that idea. In the meantime, get ready for the VAT. Or start fighting it.
Copyright 2010, Washington Post Writers Group
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/03/26/the_vat_cometh_104936.html
Posted in Charles Krauthammer ObamaCare Tax US Debt VAT with No Comments
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Mar 31
Anyone who doesn’t think that Obama is at minimum a socialist President has not been paying attention to his words and actions starting even before his run for the Presidency. His mantra ”spread the wealth around”, repeated thousands of times, reinforces this position. The ideological underpinnings of Obamacare follow this as does his position for expansion of welfare as delineated in the following editorial.
Tax the rich! All Americans should have …! His attitude is that it is unfair for people not to have houses, college educations, iPods (with his speeches on them) even when they don’t make any attempts to work or make sacrifices in order to better themselves. So… SPREAD THE WEALTH!
Obama’s attitude punishes and denigrates hard work and dedication which are basic tenets of the American way and why we have been the greatest country. It penalizes hard working Americans and disincentivizes those who could and should be productive and contributing members of our society.
This will lead to the indolence and complacency so characteristic of Socialism – that will drive our country into the abyss of mediocrity and excessively high taxes.
We must all vigorously oppose this course.
Welfare Un-Reform
Investors Business Daily 03/23/2010
The Dole: In urging Congress to extend jobless benefits again, the White House warned that unemployment could remain high through the year. Benefits may be part of the problem.
In a joint statement to Congress, the president's top economic advisers hedged against expectations of lower unemployment this year, saying the jobless rate — still hovering around 10% — will "remain elevated for an extended period."
"We do not expect further declines in unemployment this year," the White House budget director, top economist and Treasury secretary testified.
What's got them so pessimistic? Possibly an abnormally high job vacancy rate.
Normally the job vacancy rate goes down after a recession, as the job market stabilizes. But January, the latest reported month, showed an 11% spike in unfilled jobs. Vacancies are now at 2.1% — the highest since February 2009, the Labor Department says.
That means people are not taking jobs as expected at this point in the recovery. Why? Because many don't have to — thanks in part to 99 weeks and counting of unemployment benefits.
Add to that record food stamp payments and other welfare, and the unemployed have been perversely incentivized to keep holding out for better jobs, rather than take less-than-desirable or lower-paying ones. Forty percent of jobless Americans have been out of work for at least 27 weeks — the highest level since the government began keeping records in the 1940s.
"Those programs subsidize unemployment," University of Chicago economist Robert Shimer says. "There could be good reasons to do it, but we should be clear on the cost. It has a pretty substantial impact."
Generous jobless benefits alone account for as much as 1.5 points of the nation's 9.7% jobless rate, Shimer reckons.
There are also new incentives for Americans to go on the dole permanently, thanks to a provision in the stimulus package that includes a $5 billion emergency fund for states to meet demand for more welfare assistance.
The administration is expanding that supposedly temporary fund an additional $2.5 billion. The fund matches states 80 cents on the dollar for each new welfare case, making it more generous than the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) system.
In effect, Obama is paying states a bonus to sign up new welfare recipients.
This reverses the historic 1996 welfare reform, which took more than 2.7 million families off the dole by making welfare truly temporary under the new Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. TANF lowered the poverty rate for black children as a record number of single mothers learned skills and took jobs. Fixed block grants to states ended Washington paying states on a per-capita basis for every person who entered the welfare rolls.
New succor doesn't stop there. Socialized medicine threatens to add 15 million uninsured to the Medicaid rolls, which are already bloated from the recession. Working Americans with household income well above the poverty line will be eligible for a program once reserved only for the poor.
Overall, ObamaCare represents the biggest federal entitlement since Medicare and Medicaid were passed in the '60s.
Obama is overturning the welfare reform signed by his Democrat predecessor and is rapidly rebuilding the welfare state.
If more and more go on the dole instead of filling jobs that are starting to open up, it will only stall the recovery and widen the deficit.
If unemployment "remains elevated for an extended period," it's because Democrats at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue extended unemployment and welfare benefits while refusing to incentivize small businesses — the job engine of the economy — to take risks and staff up.
If Democrats lose Congress in November over chronic unemployment and record deficits, they have only themselves — and the head of their party — to blame.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=528201
Posted in Capitalism Ideology Obama Socialism US Debt Unemployment with No Comments
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Mar 22
The preliminary estimates publicized by the Congressional Budget Office have no basis in reality. Though we don't know exactly how they arrived at their artificially low number, it was unquestionably affected by the incomplete and deceptive information that they were provided with. Of course, this does not account for bald faced fraud perpetrated by the Democrats in attempting to reduce the ostensible costs with maneuvers such as removing the Medicare fix costs from the legislation.
Five Reasons The CBO Figures Are Phony
Ed Carson 3/18/2010
The Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary “score” says the health care overhaul will cost $940 billion over the first 10 years, saving $138 billion over that time. But the CBO must assess legislation as written, rather than whether it will actually be carried out. Or, as the Economist put it, “The CBO is required to pretend to believe many impossible things before breakfast.”
1. Medicare cuts
The Senate health care bill relied heavily on unprecedented cuts in Medicare spending increases. If implemented, this would have a huge impact on seniors’ care. But Congress has always balked at Medicare cuts. (See No. 3).
2. Delayed start
To make the budget math work, Democrats plan on delaying the start of subsidies and other costly provisions for several years. (The bill spends just $17 billion through 2013). The true 10-year cost is far higher.
3. The “doc fix” is excluded
The Sustainable Growth Rate imposes automatic cuts in Medicare payment rates to doctors.
For several years, fearing a revolt by doctors — and seniors — Congress has suspended those cuts. The original draft of the House health care bill included a permanent “doc fix.” But that ballooned deficits, so Democrats dropped it, even though everyone knows Congress isn’t going to slash doctors’ rates. The CBO has estimated a “doc fix” would cost $247 billion over 10 years.
4. Student loans are included
Doctors’ payments are excluded from the health bill, but major student loan program changes are included? Yep. The reconciliation bill will end student loan subsidies to lenders. The CBO says this will save $19.4 billion over the first decade, accounting for virtually all of the $19.8 billion in deficit reduction from the health care reconciliation bill. Reconciliation bills must cut the deficit by at least $1 billion. So, without the non-health care items, the health care reconciliation bill would not pass muster.
5. It’s a CLASS act
In the Senate health bill, a new, voluntary long-term care insurance program called CLASS accounted for some $72 billion of the deficit reduction. The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports program is supposed to be deficit-neutral long-term. But Democrats are counting the upfront premium surplus in the short term and ignoring the significant operating deficits after 2029. Update: Democrats also are counting on projected additional Social Security revenues from payroll taxes on higher wages in lieu of lower health benefits. Again, those benefits have to be paid out.
But wait, there’s more! Let’s assume that the cost savings materialize as planned. It still makes the long-term fiscal outlook worse. Why? Democrats are using up a lot of tax hikes, spending cuts and upfront payment just to get barely better than deficit-neutral. That leaves future lawmakers less scope to bring the nation’s finances into order.
On a related note, Democrats continue to maintain the health bill would extend Medicare’s solvency by several years. But they plan to use those as-yet-unrealized Medicare cost savings for a huge new entitlement and to reduce the overall deficit.
http://blogs.investors.com/capitalhill/index.php/home/35-politicsinvesting/1524-five-reasons-the-cbo-figures-are-phony
Posted in Arrogance Congress Democrat Healthcare Reform US Debt with No Comments
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Mar 21
The massive and ever increasing debt that the United States is incurring is threatening our future security in a variety of ways and is quite concerning to the military.
Deficits making U.S. military nervous
Will Obama have enough money left for national security?
Jerome R. Corsi March 17, 2010
WorldNetDaily
With the Obama administration pressing for a government takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy to grant health-care benefits to all Americans, the U.S. military is worried that the United States is already losing the ability to afford national defense.
The deteriorating international trade position of the U.S. as documented by the CIA is a national security concern by the U.S. military, according to the Joint Operating Environment 2010 report, or JOE 2010, released Monday by the United States Joint Forces Command, or USJFCOM.
The CIA World Factbook lists the U.S., with a negative current account balance of $380 billion, in last place among 183 nations in 2009. China, in contrast, is listed as No. 1, with a positive current account balance of $296 billion.
Nor is the United States position in international trade improving.
The U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis reported in December that the U.S. current account deficit increased to $108 billion in the third quarter of 2009 from $98 billion in the second quarter of 2009.
The current account is the broadest measure of international trade, defined as net exports and imports, plus net income and transfer payments made between nations. The largest measure is a positive or negative balance of international trade as defined by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Analysis
Reviewing the military implications, the JOE 2010 report stressed that the U.S. "chronic trade and current exchange balances have exacerbated both U.S. current account deficits and overall governmental indebtedness such that the amount of U.S. government debt held by foreigners has grown from 1.3 trillion to 3.5 trillion dollars representing 40 percent of total U.S. debt."
The USJFCOM points out in the JOE 2010 that total U.S. foreign debt has accumulated to $2.165 trillion, with China holding in U.S. Treasury debt $798 billion of its accumulated $1.95 trillion surplus in foreign exchange reserves.
With China holding a balance-of-trade advantage, exporting $270 billion annually to the U.S., while importing $61 billion to the U.S., the U.S. negative foreign exchange position vis-à-vis China is unlikely to change in the near future.
With concern the JOE 2010 notes "the emerging scale of U.S. government borrowing creates uncertainty about both our ability to repay the ever growing debt and the future value of the dollar."
WND has previously reported that the total negative net worth of the U.S. on a Generally Accepted Accounting Practices, or GAAP, basis was $70.7 trillion in 2009, five times last year's U.S. GDP and $10 trillion more than the world's GDP.
The JOE 2010 correctly noted that the unfunded obligations constitution the nation's $70.7 trillion negative net worth are a result of the U.S. baby-boom generation coming of age to receive entitlement benefits in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, while the underlying working population that pays to support the programs are declining as a consequence both of demographics and unemployment.
With regard to national defense implications of the deteriorating U.S. economic position, the JOE 2010 worried that should China demand higher interest rates as an inducement to continuing to buy the U.S. Treasury debt needed to finance continuing trillion dollar U.S. federal budget deficits, the U.S. could suffer a "hard landing" that could increase the perception the U.S. no longer controls its financial future.
Noting President Obama's warning that the U.S. economy will add $9 trillion debt over the next decade, the JOE 2010 warned the result could be "a decreased ability of the United States to allocate dollars to defense."
"Rising debt and deficit financing of government operations will require ever-larger portions of government outlays for interest payments to service the debt," the JOE 2010 cautioned. "Indeed, if current trends continue, the U.S. will be transferring approximately 7 percent of its total economic output abroad simply to service its foreign debt."
To illustrate its concern, the USJFCOM cited an alarming litany of historic examples, including the following:
• Habsburg Spain defaulted on its debt 14 times in 150 years and was staggered by high inflation until its overseas empire collapsed;
• Bourbon France became so beset by debt due to its many wars and extravagances that by 1788 the contributing social stresses resulted in its overthrow by revolution;
• Interest ate up 44 percent of the British government budget during the interwar years 1919-1930, inhibiting its ability to rearm against Germany.
"Unless current trends are reversed, the U.S. will face similar challenges, anticipating an ever-growing percentage of the U.S. government budget going to pay interest on the money borrowed to finance our deficit spending," the JOE 2010 concluded.
The USJFCOM expressed concern that U.S. current account and federal budget deficits will inevitably mean fewer dollars available to spend on defense.
In 1962, defense accounted for approximately 49 percent of total U.S. government expenditures, but by 2008 defense spending dropped to 20 percent of total government spending.
"Following current trend lines, by 2028 the defense budget will likely consume between 2.6 percent and 3.1 percent of GDP – significantly lower than the 1990s average of 3.8 percent," the JOE 2010 stressed, noting that by 2028 the Department of Defense could shrink to less than 10 percent of the total federal budget.
"The fundamental issues for the Joint Force are the long term sustainability of our current allocation of the federal budget and how we can contribute to continued security while operating within the fiscal constraints that are unfolding."
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=128413
Posted in Ideology Military Security US Debt with No Comments
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12
In direct response to the irresponsible and profligate spending by both Republicans and Democrats, three Republican politicians have proposed a Spending Limit Amendment. This would serve to rein in and constrain such runaway spending whether it is by the President or Congress.
Given our financially dire present situation and an angry America as evidenced by the ascendancy of the Tea Party, it may just stand a chance.
Tea Party Amendment
Investors Business Daily 03/03/2010
Fiscal Crisis: Tea Partyers have made it clear they don't trust politicians — Democrat or Republican. Their historic uprising may now have a surefire way to stop politicians from spending us into the abyss.
In what promises to be a consequential election year, Republican leaders are eager to get the masses who make up the Tea Party movement on their side. But Tea Partyers remember that the GOP Congress and GOP president themselves spent way too much — even expanding the fiscally doomed Medicare entitlement program. Some Tea Party leaders even accuse Republican spendthrifts of practicing socialism.
GOP Reps. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, Mike Pence of Indiana and John Campbell of California may have just hit on a way of focusing the energy of a movement that's been accused by Democrats such as former Senate aide and Forbes columnist Dan Gerstein of being "incoherent, indiscriminate" and "all over the place" in its complaints.
The three have proposed a Spending Limit Amendment to the Constitution that would restrain the federal government to the average expenditures of the post-World War II era — 20% of the U.S. economy. It would take a declaration of war or a two-thirds vote by Congress to waive the spending constraints.
Tea Partyers will no doubt be impressed by the fact that the idea comes from no less than Thomas Jefferson. In 1798, the Declaration's author wrote: "I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government."
There really is no credible argument against the idea. In common-sense fashion, the constraint would be suspended during a declared war, and any other real emergency would surely be recognized as such by two-thirds of lawmakers.
Other attempts to save Americans from the drunken sailors they send to Washington have failed. The automatic cuts of the Gramm-Rudman "sequester" of the 1980s worked, but the Supreme Court judged much of the law to be an unconstitutional restriction on presidential powers, and Congress defanged it. Gramm-Rudman's successor, Paygo, didn't use fixed targets, and expired in 2002. The line-item veto was famously ruled unconstitutional by the high court.
The Hensarling-Pence-Campbell Spending Limit Amendment is actually preferable to the line-item veto because it doesn't discriminate between big-spending Congresses and profligate presidents. It snaps the public purse closed on every Washington politician's fingers.
The SLA couldn't come at a more opportune time. The president and Congress want to add to our current $12 trillion in national debt a $2-trillion-plus big government health overhaul. Medicare, in the meantime, is less than a decade from bankruptcy, Social Security less than three decades away. As the plan points out, "if the SLA is not adopted, all of these programs are doomed on their current auto-pilot glide path as these three entitlement programs alone — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — are set to consume the entirety of the federal budget by 2036."
Investor's Business Daily on Wednesday asked Hensarling and Pence about the difficulties of getting three-quarters of the states to approve an amendment when so many amendment attempts by both sides of the aisle — from equal rights for women to abortion to flag desecration — have failed in recent decades.
"We're not naive," Hensarling said, noting that of about 5,000 proposed amendments only 27 have been ratified. But both men said that based on attending town halls and other venues, they have never seen the American people so incensed about runaway spending. The SLA "might be one of those simple ideas," Pence said, whose time has finally come.
If the Tea Party movement embraces this simple idea, with Thomas Jefferson as the SLA's avatar, there's no telling how big the political tsunami to strike Washington could end up becoming.
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=522845
Posted in Congress Constitutional Amendments Democrat Government spending Republican Tea Parties with No Comments
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Feb 16
The recession keeps dragging on despite close to a trillion dollars in stimulus money and other focal incentives wasted by the federal government. What is happening?
Small businesses, the real engines of our economy, are extremely worried about present conditions and future prospects including massive government regulations and more than 2 trillion dollars of proposed tax hikes that would destroy thousands of businesses. Consequently, they are being advisably circumspect, prudent and conservative, trying to protect the viability of their businesses rather than take aggressive actions that could jeopardize their survival.
For starters, we would all benefit from a massive across the board decrease in taxes, major reduction in government spending, and abolishing useless and costly regulations...
A Real Cure For What Ails Small Biz
Investors Business Daily 02/09/2010
Jobless Recession: Small business has been a key part of plans to stimulate the economy from the very start of the Obama presidency. So why is this crucial job-creating sector of our economy doing so poorly?
The latest soundings from small business are not reassuring. In its annual poll of 2,114 members, for example, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) found that "small-business owners entered 2010 the same way they left 2009 — depressed." Meanwhile, the ADP Small Business Report for January shows companies with fewer than 50 workers shed an additional 22,000 jobs.
These are the businesses that account for 48 million jobs, or 44% of all private nonfarm employment — and two-thirds or more of all employment growth in recent years. But despite efforts by government to "fix" their problems, they've only grown worse. The programs were ineffective or never got off the ground.
Last year, amid much hoopla, the White House announced plans to give tax credits to "green" energy companies. As a result, according to reporter Renee Schoof of McClatchy Newspapers, the U.S. installed a record 9,900 megawatts of wind-power generating capacity last year — enough to power 2.4 million homes.
A boon for conservation jobs? Hardly. Indeed, the American Wind Energy Association reports the industry cut 2,000 jobs last year, in part because some of the wind energy equipment is made overseas.
Then there was the program unveiled in March to spend $15 billion to "unlock" lending to small businesses. That grew to a $30 billion program later in the year after TARP funds were added to the mix. But as noted by ABC News reporter and blogger Jake Tapper, this is a "phantom" jobs program.
Even Neil Barofsky, head of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, admitted as much. As of Dec. 31, he wrote recently, "the details of the initiative under this program had not been announced and no funds had been disbursed."
In short, the White House talked about $30 billion in aid to small businesses, but never did anything about it.
Meanwhile, President Obama announced a sweeping small-business aid program in his State of the Union. He knows this is key to the economy's recovery, if only because he hears it all the time from Democrats and Republicans.
Among the president's new proposals for small business are a $5,000 tax credit to hire new workers, elimination of capital gains taxes and new incentives to invest in plants and equipment. Will anything come of it? Based on recent history, we doubt it.
Congress, correctly interpreting its sinking poll numbers, has also jumped on the jobs bandwagon and is eagerly crafting another big-time jobs stimulus — this one rumored to be $80 billion in size.
Some of Obama's ideas aren't bad. But even if passed, they likely wouldn't help much. The problems that small businesses have aren't about small businesses per se; they're about the economy.
Small businesses have the same doubts as the rest of us. Besides all these "jobs programs," they see a failed $862 billion stimulus, a $700 billion TARP program that has turned into a politicized auto and bank bailout fund, Cash for
Clunkers, attempts in Copenhagen to impose massive taxes on America to stave off global warming, a $1 trillion health care overhaul, new "responsibility fees" on banks, and worry for our economy's future.
Worse, the new budget contains $2 trillion in tax hikes over a decade, mostly on multinationals and successful entrepreneurs. These taxes undo all the good the White House and Congress would do with their "incentives" and "credits" and whatnot.
Washington thus has it wrong. Businesses aren't awaiting more "stimulus." As the NFIB suggested, they're clinically depressed, seeing the government's dead weight lying across the economy for years to come in all its spending, taxing and ad hoc rule-making.
What sensible entrepreneur would commit his wealth to a money-making project in such a high-tax, high-regulation environment — one in which those who make profits are routinely demonized?
This is a problem with a solution, and the solution is the same one that's worked in the past: Cut taxes across the board — for business big and small — and look for ways to cut regulations, not add more. At the same time, pull back on the insane surge in government spending.
By unlocking our nation's entrepreneurial spirit and reviving growth across the economy, we can put an end to this nightmare and help all Americans regain prosperity. Then small businesses can get back to doing what they do best: create lots of jobs.
URL http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=520675
Posted in Capitalism Congress Economy Government spending Ideology Recession Taxes with No Comments
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14
Government Workers Make 45 Percent More Than Private Sector Employees
by Chris Banescu Feb. 9, 2010
A new report from the Bureaus of Labor Statistics that was released today, shows that almost 15 million Americans are currently out of work and unable to find jobs. Worse still, those with jobs have not seen their wages increase much in the last 10 years. However, government workers are enjoying a boom in hiring and generous salary increases thanks in large part to very cushy pensions and other benefits.
The pay differential between public sector employees and the private sector shows a troubling trend. Government workers have benefited greatly, even during the severe recession, and their wages now outpace the employee compensation in private industry. According to recent research done by Mark J. Perry, professor of finance and economics at the School of Management of the University of Michigan government employees make on average 45% more than private sector employees.
state and local government employers spent an average of $39.83 per hour worked ($26.24 for wages and $13.60 for benefits) for total employee compensation in September 2009. Total employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.49 per hour ($19.45 for wages and $8.05 for benefits). In other words, government employees make 45% more on average than private sector employees.
According to another BLS report, compensation for private industry workers has increased by 6.9% between December 2006 and December 2009, compared to a 9.8% increase for government workers (state and local) over the same period.
Meanwhile, the unemployment situation in the US progressively deteriorates with few signs of improvement. Finding a job for ordinary Americans has gotten much harder. Forbes summarizes the many problems workers still face:
Finding a job got much tougher last year, as the number of available openings fell by nearly one quarter.
At the same time, the unemployed population soared by more than one-third, leaving more laid-off workers competing for fewer jobs.
All told, there were 6.1 unemployed workers in December, on average, for every available position, according to Labor Department data released Tuesday.
That’s a sharp increase from 3.4 jobless workers per opening in December of 2008, and much worse than the 1.7 unemployed people per opening in December 2007, when the recession began.
That may seem like a lot given the severity of the recession, but that’s down from 3.2 million in December 2008. And it’s way below the 4.8 million openings that existed in June 2007, the peak reached before the recession.
The U.S. economy has lost approximately 8.7 million jobs since November 2007 when a high of 146,483,000 jobs was reached.
As of January 2010 the U.S. had barely over 137 million private sector jobs. From the CyberEconomics blog we get this depressing information:
The number of employed (total jobs) dropped by 589,000 from Nov to Dec. Most did not move to unemployed but dropped out of the labor force. In the past year, (December to December) 5,390,000 jobs have been lost–that is drop in the number of employed. However, there is some good news–the October unemployment rate was revised from 10.2% to 10.1%.
The labor force participation rate has dropped from 66.5% in December 2008 to 64.6% in December 2009. As people lost jobs, many left the labor force. If they had stayed in, being counted as unemployed, the unemployment rate would be 11.6%.
Given the lack of real economic leadership, virtually no free-market policies coming from the White House, coupled with aggressive taxation and anti-business policies from the Obama administration and the Democrats in Washington, there is little hope that job losses will abate any time soon. Things may even get worse. Dark clouds are on the horizon for the American workers.
On the other hand, government workers are enjoying their amazing good fortune, richly rewarded with our tax dollars by career politicians who seem to have forgotten their oaths of office and constitutional responsibilities. We get to sacrifice and they get all the benefits of power. The political elites in DC keep thinking they can have their cake and eat it too, while the American taxpayers have to make do with the crumbs left over from the government lavish feasts and perpetual bailouts of the unions, failed car companies, failed banks, failed programs, etc..
I believe they’re in for a big surprise come November 2010.
http://chrisbanescu.com/blog/2010/02/09/government-workers-make-45-percent-more-than-private-sector-employees/
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Sep 5
There are a rapidly dwindling number of Americans left (no pun intended) that actually believe Obama when he deceitfully states that the healthcare bill is solely about providing care for all Americans – and nothing else. In previous posts, we have enumerated countless examples of this egregious lie and the pernicious effects that the contained provisions will have on our privacy, rights, choices, finances, taxes, access to care and more. We have been resolutely emphatic that this bill is also about government intrusion and control of our lives and control of an additional seventeen percent of the nations GDP.
To make matters worse, CBS News has reported a previously unnoticed provision of the healthcare bill which will legally grant widespread access to our federal tax returns. It mandates that the Health Choices Commissioner and staff, state health programs and all their staff and the expansive Social Security Administration with its thousands of employees will have unfettered access to these returns which so far have been fairly well protected by the IRS. The government’s utter incompetence in protecting highly classified information is well known. Do you really think, then, that your personal information will remain secure with tens of thousands or more people having access to it?
Even more disconcerting, is that this bill will provide the government with complete access to your health records, tax returns and all financial information including bank accounts. Do you really want or trust the government to possess all that information on you? It surely leaves little that it won’t know about you. Even worse, we have seen this type of information used by the government and others for nefarious purposes that could leave you embarrassed, vulnerable and defenseless (see for example Joe the Plumber).
Read: Health Bill Breeches IRS Privacy
Posted in Bank Accounts Government Control Healthcare Healthcare Reform Obama Personal rights Privacy Taxes with No Comments
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Aug 31
Though our present political and economic situation is not the least bit funny, some people have the creative genius to expose and attack negatives in a positive, humorous, insightful and influential way. The following musical video by Tim Hawkins explores the false promises and failures of our government.
Posted in Financial Government Control Videos with No Comments
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Aug 25
Yes, Michelle, you now have another good reason to be proud of your country: it’s paying for your servants so that you can continue to comport yourself like arrogant royalty. Let’s revisit that famous statement you made last year and see how much better the situation is for you today. Most Americans could only dream of being given millions of dollars at taxpayer expense without holding an official job and having every one of your whims catered to without protest. But then again this is not unlike your previous “work” experience back in Chicago.
During an almost two year deep recession with high unemployment, with millions of Americans suffering economically, and trillions of dollars of wealth evaporated, you see no reason why you should sympathize and suffer too. Instead, it seems that you are trying almost single-handedly to significantly reduce the unemployment rate by hiring at least 26 servants at taxpayer expense exceeding two millions dollars per year. The number of attendants that you “require” obliterates numerically and cost wise what any previous First Lady needed. Even Hillary Clinton who was spearheading healthcare reform had a maximum of only 13 people under her. Meanwhile, Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower had to shell out the salaries for their personal secretaries out of their own pocketbooks. How times have changed for the better! Isn’t that what you stated, Michelle?
Does your Chief of Staff really need to be paid $172,200? That is on par with what our Senators and Congressional Representatives receive and who may work slightly harder for their $174,000. Of course, maybe “combat” pay is included in your Chief of Staff’s base salary to make working under you a little bit more palatable.
Why do five members of your staff deserve to earn over $100,000 per year? Is that really necessary during a financial crisis? Can’t you show just a little fiscal responsibility and restraint? I wouldn’t look to your husband for advice, though, as he also appears to be clueless, sybaritic and financially reckless. Instead of signing the Porkulus bill in the White House Rose Garden like past Presidents have done for other legislation, Obama had to grandstand and fly to Phoenix and Colorado, costing the American taxpayer probably in excess of $30 million dollars. That amount could have paid for a lot of school supplies for children.
Your irresponsible, arrogant, and profligate spending for your little microcosm in addition to Obama’s for both personal (remember your date in New York?) and public adulation are just more reasons that we, the American people can’t and won’t trust your husband, Obama, with the healthcare and other legislation and with our tax dollars. But there is no need to despair as there is a silver lining. You will still have your own taxpayer financed gold plated healthcare plan that the average American would lust for rather than the restrictive, convoluted, and rationed one that Obama wants to impose on us.
Read: First Lady Now Requires 26 Servants
Posted in Arrogance Congress Economy Financial Healthcare Reform Ideology Michelle Obama Obama Recession Socialized Medicine Taxes Videos with No Comments
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Aug 24
The inordinate, unrestrained and unapologetically irresponsible “budget” of Obama and the effects on the debt are so gargantuan that it may be hard to fathom. Unbelievably, this recklessness barely evokes a yawn from the news media and fellow Democrats. These same people were relentlessly attacking Bush as being fiscally irresponsible yet the increase in debt and spending under his Administration were only a small fraction of Obama’s who has only been in office for seven months.
The following “National Debt Road Trip” illustrates the relative changes over time and puts it all in perspective.
Posted in Congress Democrat Financial Obama Republican Videos with No Comments
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Aug 22
Americans are venting their anger and disapproval of Obama’s policies and rhetoric and it is having a significant effect on the political debate, politicians and on other citizens who are beginning to express their concerns. Many voters in the middle of the political spectrum who were not impressed with McCain or were inspired with the aura, vigor and the ostensible freshness of Obama and his promises of “change that you can believe in” and therefore voted for him now feel more than betrayed and duped. Instead of the refreshing, inspired, positive, constructive and “post-racial” President, they now see a narcissistic, condescending, arrogant, hypocritical, elitist and dismissive one who adheres to outdated racial victimization demagoguery, class warfare envy, irresponsible and disingenuous fiscal policies, and immutable radical ideologies.
These inimical personal characteristics and his radical left persuasion should surprise nobody. Despite his outrageous denials of hearing anything offensive in the incendiary, racist, hateful sermons of Reverend Wright, we all know that he heard them and concurred. You don’t attend church weekly for 20 years, have him marry you and your wife, baptize your children, refer to him as an uncle like figure and donate thousands of dollars if you disagreed with his rhetoric. Any person of character and integrity would have picked themselves up and walked right out of that church and never returned after hearing one of those vile sermons . He didn’t! His overtly race based selections (Sotomayor, Eric Holder, Regina Benjamin, czars, etc.) and unwarranted involvement in local “racial” issues (Cambridge police and Afro-American Harvard professor of black studies) patently substantiate his racial bigotry and adherence to such policies.
People are very angry now with what they have seen in less than seven months and feel that it is too important to remain silent. It is imperative that all of us are very vocal in our dissent, using our freedom of free speech to effect the changes that we want, preserve our liberties as well as our hard earned incomes. We must make sure that the government answers to us rather than it impose its will and dictates on us!
Read: Prairie-Fire Anger
Posted in Arrogance Attorney General Eric Holder Czar Financial Freedom of Speech Ideology Obama Racism Reverse Racism Sotomayor Taxes with No Comments
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Aug 8
Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. What we have unfolding now with our Government’s intended responses to the Recession, specifically orchestrated by Obama and Congressional Democrats, is eerily and remarkably identical to the actions first initiated by President Hoover in 1932 and then expanded by Franklin Roosevelt. Their policies included onerous tax increases, numerous new taxes on common items, and massive government spending. The upshot of all of this was a severe worsening and prolongation of the Depression by another 12 years!
Assessing the proposals by the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats, they have passed gargantuan spending bills including the Stimulus (Porkulus) Bill of almost $800 billion dollars, hundreds of billions in TARP funds, are intending to pass the bankrupting Cap and Trade Bill which will cost this country trillions of dollars, and healthcare “reform” that in its present form will realistically cost tens of trillions of dollars. Add to this the proposed income tax increases, taxation on virtually anything that exists and arcane compliance legislation and we will have the mother of all Depressions and the bankrupting of this country.
The ideological fervor with which Obama and the Democrats are pursuing these reckless and irresponsible policies and bills as well as their dismissive attitude of the historical lessons and public discontent demonstrates their unparalleled arrogance and disdain for the American people as well as their intellectual and moral corruptness. This bodes poorly for our future.
Read: Revenue Plunge Is Nothing New
Posted in Arrogance Cap and Trade Congress Democrat Economy Financial Government Control Healthcare Reform Ideology Obama Taxes with No Comments
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Jul 3
For those of us who have not been worshipping Obama acolytes since the inception of his Presidential campaign, it should come as no shock that his acumen and prudence regarding financial leadership and decisions are abysmal at best but in general, catastrophic. The present course he has placed this country on will take us to the precipice of financial bankruptcy with crushing debt that will affect generations to come. Add just some of it up: the Porkulus spending bills, hundreds of billions in bailout, and trillions in unfunded costs for government controlled healthcare and this doesn’t even include the tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security that will need to be addressed.
Why should this come as no surprise to anyone even ignoring ideological issues? Because has never had to run any business, either his or anyone else’s. He has zero experience! Not even a manager at McDonalds. This is a crash course, on the job learning except, unfortunately, the job just happens to be that of the President of the United States.
Read: A Debt The Founders Wouldn't Believe
Posted in Financial Ideology Obama with No Comments
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May 22
Despite rejecting the recent initiatives to increase taxes and spending this past Tuesday, California finds itself in dire straits from years of liberal fiscal profligacy.
Read George Will’s recent editorial on this matter: If California Is The Next Bailout, What Will Obama's Conditions Be?
Posted in Financial Government Control with No Comments
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May 20
It has become a noxious pattern by the Obama Administration in their proposals and legislation: penalize the productive and reward the irresponsible. As a response to the real estate collapse, he has recommended cram-downs whereby judges could unilaterally reduce the principle amount of a mortgage in favor of the often irresponsible buyer thereby invalidating the agreement. The far reaching implications of this would mean that no contract would be worth the paper it is written on. (Of course, this would be a metaphor for Obama’s promises and his real intent and actions.) Who would suffer by this action? Everyone else who has been paying their mortgages on time or those who would like to purchase a home. The mortgage rates they would now be facing would be artificially higher – an unjust cost of subsidizing those who have been dishonest or irresponsible.
The Obama administration has its fingerprints on many of these same schemes of involuntary wealth transfer from productive individuals and corporations. Examples include multiple taxation proposals (Federal income taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, Long term capital gains taxes, etc.), the selective bailout of failing companies and especially those with a large labor union workforce, healthcare reform proposals and even environmental issues.
Now we have a new arena ripe for Obama’s socialist mandates: the credit card industry. Reforms are clearly warranted here as there have been many egregious abuses by banks and other lending institutions. Despite some of what you may read (including in the article below), in its present iteration, several of the proposed changes would provide greater reward to those who are irresponsible, profligate spenders and penalize those who pay their bills on time. Competitive constraints levied on these companies by legislation would limit their options to reward those who are a better financial risk.
Credit Card Industry Aims to Profit From Sterling Payers
Posted in Congress Credit Cards Financial Obama Taxes with 2 Comments
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