Obama Proposes $0.24 Gas Tax Last Year in Office

What every American will be doing if this nonsense passes.

Per this press release from the Institute for Energy Research:

Obama Proposes a New Tax on Every American Driver

 WASHINGTON – Institute for Energy Research President Thomas Pyle issued the following statement about the Obama administration’s plan to propose a $10/barrel tax on oil:

"The president is proposing a nearly 24 cent per gallon tax on the very energy source that keeps Americans and our economy moving. This is a tax on every American driver, and it would have the harshest impact on those who can least afford it. For a president who claims to care about helping the poor, he sure doesn't show it in his policies. Fortunately, this proposal is dead on arrival in Congress. However, the president is clearly trying to lay the groundwork for a future carbon tax.

"The administration is claiming the purpose of this tax is to raise revenue for some grand transportation plan, but it’s really about taxing the energy they don’t like to make President Obama’s favored energy sources and companies more profitable. The revenue generated from a new energy tax is peanuts compared to the revenue, jobs, wages, and economic activity that could be created by simply opening federal lands to energy development. Now that he has nothing to lose politically, the president is showing us his true stripes by trying to impose an energy tax on American families."

Read more at POLITICO here

In the past 30 years, the U.S. Federal Government Seized $51 Trillion from its citizens

The U.S. Federal government has taken in $51 Trillion (or $51,000,000,000,000) from its citizens over the past 30 years, official White House numbers show.

According to "Table 1.1—Summary of Receipts, Outlays, and Surpluses or Deficits (-): 1789–2020" on the White House's Office of Budget and Management website, from the years 1985, when Ronald Reagan was president, to 2014, under our current President Obama, the Federal government took in $51,784,162,000,000 -- to be exact.

In other words, five presidents -- President Reagan (Republican), one-term President George H.W. Bush (Republican), two-term President Bill Clinton (Democrat), two-term President George W. Bush (Republican), and two-term President Barack Obama (Democrat) -- presided over the biggest private-to-public wealth transfer in American history.

Nearly every year federal spending went up.

In total, from 1985 to 2014, the U.S. Federal Government outspent more than they took in, spending $62,039,599,000,000 over the 30 year span.

This blog post comes at a time where a constantly resurfacing blog post (true or not) about black Christian churches voluntarily receiving hundreds of billions of dollars over a similar 30 year time span keeps grabbing people's attention on social media.

This blog post attempts to put that in context, if not set it straight altogether.

Despite multiple websites such as AllChristianNews and Urban Intellectuals posting the article, the original source of both posts is a 2009 blog post by HarlemWorldMagazine. The current link is broken. But the original post was archived thanks to the Wayback Machine.

Such blog posts talk about a so-called "return on investment" that black communities are receiving from their churches...

...but one has to wonder what is the real return on "investment" -- because we all know taxes are for investments -- that the black communities are receiving from the U.S. Federal Government.

So black churches have received $420 billion over 30 years (on average $14.3 billion per year) according to the 2009 blog post.  The government took $420 billion over seven times in 2014, or 7.194016 to be more precise.

Over seven times.

Does anyone care?

In fact, the last time the Federal Government took less than $420 billion in a year from its citizens (and remember, this is still by force; non-compliant citizens will go to jail) was 1978.

The HarlemWorldMagazine blog post notes:

“The church has gotten caught up in materialism and greed, a lifestyle. Many ministers today want to live like celebrities and they want to be treated like celebrities. In other words, instead of the church standing with the community, the church has become self-serving. It has strayed away from its mission” according to Dr.Love Henry Whelchel, professor of church history at The Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.

Ahh yes, materialism....greed...things the Federal government is not guilty of.

It goes on:

LiveSteez’s investigative series will take a forensic editorial approach to quantifying the return to Black America for the $350 billion in tax-favored donations it has given to the Black Church, examining the arguments on both sides of the pulpit. In this series we will seek answers and advisory to the following questions:

- How often and how much do church leaders take advantage of the faith of poor black people?

-We will investigate and indentify (sic) the churches they are showing a strong return on investment that goes beyond inspiration.

- What does the black community have to show for the $350 billion in tax free dollars?

- Expert analysis on what could potentially be done with such a huge amount of money and how it could improve the state of our communities.

- Why do some church leaders refuse to participate in the Grassley congressional Investigation, which requested the financial records of several mega-churches.

And as a counter investigation, the Goins Report will investigate the return of "investment" to all of the United States for prying $51 trillion out of the hands of its citizenry.

We will ask the following questions:

A) How often and how much do politicians take advantage of the faith of poor black people?

B)We will investigate and identify the communities that are showing a strong return on investment that goes beyond inspiration.

C) What does the black community have to show for the $51 trillion in private wealth stolen from them and their fellow non-black citizens?

D) Expert analysis on what could potentially be done with such a huge amount of money and how it could improve the state of our communities.

E) Why do some political institutions, such as the Department of Defense and the U.S. Federal Reserve, refuse to participate in an audit?

Answer Key:

A) All the time.

B) Washington DC and the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs, according to a 2013 report. According to a 2011 report,  Washington DC was the Richest city in the country. Could that be because there is a buzzing bureaucratic state surrounded by tons of lobbyists and workers in the defense and security industries? 

C) Twice as much unemployment as whites.

D) The African-American community would be so rich that they could spend their money on their own education, food, healthcare, etc. 

E) The Fed would claim that an audit interferes with their allegedly politically independent nature. But Rand Paul provides a better answer. And I don't know where to start with the Pentagon, but there is trans-partisan support for an "Audit the Pentagon" bill. Rand Paul supports that too.

 In the end, all of the hysteria over churches is about comparatively nothing. Comparatively.

The author still has serious exegetical problems (scriptural interpretations) of the prosperity preaching. But however "fruitful" misguided prosperity preaching is in convincing people to voluntarily give their income to religious institutions, it pales in comparison to the against the sophistry and use of force by the Federal Government to take money from its citizens.

Not a single person went to jail for not paying their tithes.

But try not paying your taxes and watch what happens.

Secondly, look at how much of a stretch the biased anti-Christian blog posts have to take. They have to go back 30 years to make the Black Church try to resemble anything that looks bad.

On a year-by-year basis, the Black Church on average voluntarily received $14.3 billion, or 14,333,333,333.33 per year.

But one only has to look back to last quarter to make the government look monstrous. In fact, the more you look back at how much the government spends, the more you question. The more you put the church numbers in perspective, the less you feel bad about it.

Religion, in this case, is a red herring -- a distraction -- from the larger issue of state power. In fact, if you want to keep religion involved, then I would say it is the false religion of the state that is at issue here; not true religion; not Christianity.

LiveSteez, by the way, is defunct.

Christopher Hitchens, my home boy, and I

No, that's not me on the right. That's the person I went to the "What Best Explains Reality: Theism or Atheism?" debate with featuring Frank Turek vs. Christopher Hitchens on March 31, 2009 at TCNJ. This was moments after I met Christopher Hitchens for the second time. He had signed the original copy of a 500 word profile of him I wrote for my magazine writing class in Spring 2009.

"Do you have an extra copy?" I recall him asking.

I didn't. And in fact, I thought about leaving him a copy but there wasn't a Kinko's in sight on our way there.

If I remember correctly, I was the last person to have anything signed by Christopher Hitchens that night. It was getting late. Christopher had already signed tons of autographs. And I believe he had a plane to catch.

My homeboy, then a Christian, asked Christopher why he didn't believe in God?

It was one of those, "it's obvious there is a God, why don't you believe in him?"-type questions. It was very passionate.

I don't remember Christopher's response.

But my friend asked him the question as he was still sitting down. I had just stepped away after my paper was signed. Shortly after saying something, Christopher Hitchens stood up, and either he or his help had a gray wheeled luggage bag (or maybe I'm confusing his bag for the one Frank Turek possibly had). He told Christopher about his flight.

That one Christian guy who asks atheists why they don't believe

I was reminded of the entire 2009 TCNJ scene when an old white man, after the Q&A opened up, popped the first question to ask Richard Dawkins at the National Press Club a few weeks ago. Also admittedly an atheist -- at least for that night -- Sally Quinn, a long-time Washington Post reporter and editor, gave one of the worst interviews of Richard Dawkins I've ever seen.

Why do I say that?

Because she steered the conversation to make Richard Dawkins says things that he has literally said 1,000 times before in his speaking and debate circuits after the publication of his 2006 bestseller The God Delusion. We could Wiki some of his answers. This lady is a religion editor. You would have thought she would have done her homework. Maybe she did. Maybe she had done the kind of preparation for a test where the examiner doesn't question you on anything you had studied for. That would be apt, except she was the examiner. And examiner decided to test you on last month's material, which you certainly knew, but were prepared for something more recent (Does this hypothetical ever happen? lol)

Richard Dawkins was there on September 30, 2013 to discuss his new book "An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist" (2013), the first half of his two-part memoir. The best she could have done was read excerpts from the book, and then ask him to expound on that.

"What did you mean when you said..." would have been a much more productive way of interviewing than pointing out he became an atheist in his teens (something he has said many times before) and contrasting that with her own awareness that she was an atheist at age 5. Instead, she barely asked about the book, in my view. As I see it, she was a Washington Post reporter getting an exclusive interview with Richard Dawkins and used her exclusive interview to self-servingly get some personal questions answered.

Anyway, after what I guess was a half-hour of virtually unproductive conversation, the Q&A started.

The aforementioned first questioner asked "Why don't you believe in the empirical evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ?"

The question brought me back to my friend who asked a similar question with the same underlying vein: "Dear atheist, why don't you see it?"

Thank you for saving me, Richard Dawkins

I respected the question. Both questions. But I must say the following time was spent on two non-questions, a question about when atheism is going to catch on (or something like that) and at least one conspiracy-deny conspiracy theorist. I'll get to the latter in a second.

But a woman explained that she was on the way to the nunnery when she picked up a copy of Richard Dawkins' classic The Selfish Gene, which was even required text for some classes at my alma mater of La Salle University. At that point, she had dropped everything, changed course of her life to one that was religious and would have been completely religious if she had become a nun, and embraced the secular life in all its wonder.

Another man, a former Muslim originally from a Middle Eastern country, explained that it was The Selfish Gene that was the text that changed his outlook on life.

Another guy, who apparently attempted to indulge in some camaraderie before posing his question by, I think, tipping his hat towards The Selfish Gene or maybe some other RD work, asked something to the effect of "What do you think about Government conspiracy?" I believe it dealt with the fact that governments lie. That is true. (I'm sure the question is on tape. That will correct the record.) But there was some brief mention of 9/11 conspiracy theories, but the way it was postulated it was like he was trying to have it both ways. Sure he was secular, maybe even thought of himself as a critical thinker, and whatever he researched in his personal time he may have indeed had some good points, but the way he asked his question was ambiguous, and one wouldn't know if he was pro-conspiracy theory or not (I, for one, think they're OK, if support by facts). Richard was puzzled. So was I.

It also reminds of the way Sally Quinn conducted her interview. Not that her questions had anything to do with conspiracy. They didn't. But I feel like she used the opportunity to ask questions so he could answer and, in effect, do the research for her.

And that's the same way I felt with the guy. Richard Dawkins, by all accounts, is a scientist, not a philosopher of religion, or a political philosopher. (He did mention he wanted to live in a world where people pay taxes, as if taxes were moral things in themselves. In that case, I wouldn't want to live a world that Richard Dawkins gets to construct.) So asking him a political question is kind of intellectually lazy on the questioners part, because it seems like all these people want them to do is give free advice or do the research for the person.

Can we finally--finally!--talk about the book?

In the end, I met Richard Dawkins for the first time. Saw a buddy -- who described himself as "not convinced" by Dawkins and somewhat of "a mystic" -- I recently met a few weeks ago there. And got two RD's signature. It was the only novel thing I got from the experience, and perhaps the only novel thing other attendees got from their experiences. It's not like they could get a novel interview when it's conducted by Sally Quinn. Not that day, at least.

I did entertain a few people waiting in line to get there book signed. And one guy, probably one of the only other black people in the crowd (whether Tea Party rallies or anti-war rallies, politically left or politically right, black people hardly are in the crowds where I do my serious reporting or blogging) recommended I buy Vincent Bugliosi's "The Divinity of Doubt: The God Question." It has been added to my Amazon Wish List.

I ordered The God Delusion a few days before, and so I didn't have the physical copy in front of him to sign. He signed my Amazon receipt instead, which I cut out and pasted into my copy of The God Delusion when it arrived in the mail days later.

The other thing I had RD sign was a printed page of the old Richard Dawkins website. There was a post on there about Richard Dawkins "fleas" (the number of response books to The God Delusion). The blue response book, picture above, is what I originally planned on posting that second RD signature into. I haven't done that yet. The Ipod Tutor: The Argument Against Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion is one of three response books I own. I also own secular Jew, agnostic, and mathematician David Berlinki's book "The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and it's Scientific Pretension's" and Christian and mathematician John Lennox's "God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?" I bought all three response books back in college prior to 2011. Perhaps all prior to 2010. I haven't completed one, although I did get through a good portion of Lennox's book back in college, with the highlights, and red and blue ink to show for it. I plan to read all four books soon, meaning within a year or two, starting with the Dawkin's book.

He (RD) was eminently pleasant, by the way.

"Do you want me to sign here?" he said. I was in awe and calmed by his pleasant demeanor.

Walter Williams Explodes the Reasons to Tax the Rich, Again

In the face of our looming financial calamity, what are we debating about? It's not about the reduction or elimination of the immoral conduct that's delivered us to where we are. It's about how we pay for it — namely, taxing the rich, not realizing that even if Congress imposed a 100 percent tax on earnings higher than $250,000 per year, it would keep the government running for only 141 days.

Immoral Beyond Redemption || Walter Williams

Jobless Wrap-Up for August

Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics came out with its August job numbers.

Clinton: "This election to me is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment."

Here's a wrap-up of the best headlines (Kudos to the Drudge Report for some of these.):

The unemployment rate for August is 8.1 percent, Yahoo Finance reports.

A record 88.9 million Americans are not in the workforce, CNSNews.com reports.

The real unemployment rate for June is 15 percent says Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), yours truly reports for Politic365.com.

Black unemployment remains at 14.1 percent, Politic365.com reports.

Low-wage jobs add the most jobs in the past year, Zerohedge reports. Jokes: Tomorrow's Pravda Today headline: "UNEMPLOYMENT RATE PLUNGES"

Confirmation: A study says that the majority of new jobs pay low wages, the New York Times reports.

Two charts show that President Obama is the worst among job creators, The Goins Report compiles the sources.

Related: Taxing Millionaires Won't Fix the Economy, CBS News reports. The rich aren't getting richer, CNBC.com reports--they're getting poorer. Marketwatch reports that college graduates are taking jobs that require no degree.

Taxing Millionaires won't fix the Economy, Budget Expert says

From CBS News:

(CBS News) Federal budget expert Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget, said the "Buffett Rule" is not "going to come anywhere close to fixing the problem" of income inequality or the national debt

"Because...growing income inequality has been so pronounced in the past year, what you can't do is pretend that only taxing millionaires is going to come anywhere close to fixing the problem," MacGuineas said on CBS News' "Face to Face."

Budget expert: Taxing millionaires won't fix the economy || CBS News 

Related: The Decline of the Rich

Weekly Health Review, Vol. 13

Ex-Porn star Jenna Jameson tells the women of the Twitterverse that they're entitled to all the sex that they want, but that doesn't mean she should have to pay for their birth control, The Goins Report has the story.

U.S. Appeals court blocks FDA "graphic image" labels on cigarettes in the name of the First Amendment, the Associated Press (via Time Healthland).

Mitt Romney defends Massachusetts health law as better than Obama's, The Hill reports.

Yes, we passed the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" and we are still finding out what's in it, including thirteen new taxes on top of the expiration of several tax cuts in 2013 that will affect the middle class and the rich alike, The New American magazines reports.

More and more doctors are suffering from burnout, and more than people in other professions, Reuters reports.

Health policy experts say that the Affordable Care Act will drive people to "concierge doctors" and increases demand for care while doing little to expand supply, CNSNews.com reports.

Flashback: HHS fully aware of doctor shortage, announces $250 million to strengthen the primary care workforce, CNSNews.com reported in 2010.

DOC: Physician shortages set to increase without increases in residency training.

Americans are having fewer children each year since the financial meltdown of 2008, Bloomberg reports.

Is Missouri Rep. Todd Akin (R) running for President? Nope. But that isn't stopping the Obama presidential campaign from sending out a mass e-mail to his supporters linking Akin's "legitimate rape" comments to the GOP platform. ABC News has learned in advance that Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student who made politcal noise earlier this year for her statements before a House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, will be sending out the e-mail.

Update: VP Running Mate Paul Ryan (R) dodges the Akin-ization of the GOP campaign narrative as he refuses to explain the "forcible rape" language he used in a bill earlier in his congressional career, The Hill and ABC News' Jake Tapper reports.

The Decline of the Rich

Tax the rich? According to a new report, the rich have an increasingly-shrinking slice of the pie. But Obama and the left say they need to pay just a little bit more. Just a little more sacrifice.

CNBC has the story:

The presidential election has given us two myths about the rich. First, that their incomes, and income inequality, are at all-time highs. Second, that the wealthy pay less in taxes than ever, and lower taxes than the rest of us.

A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office, however, suggests that both may be false.

The Falling Fortunes of the One Percent || CNBC.com

Balancing Budget at Current Spending Would Take Record High Taxation | CNSNews.com

(CNSNews.com) - Both President Barack Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney have recently said they would like to balance the federal budget. However, according to data published by Obama’s own White House Office of Management and Budget, accomplishing that goal at anywhere near the current level of federal spending would require imposing and sustaining a record level of federal taxation as a percentage of GDP.

Balancing Budget at Current Spending Would Take Record High Taxation | CNSNews.com

Lawyer Representing States Challenging Obamacare: Justice Roberts ‘Rewrote the Law’

Washington (GoinsReport.com) -- A lawyer representing the 26 states challenging the 2010 healthcare law said Monday that Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion for the 5-4 vote that upheld the Constitutionality of President Obama’s healthcare law, “rewrote the law” when invoking the taxing powers of Congress to justify upholding the Affordable Care Act.

“He did not interpret the language that Congress enacted,” David Rivkin explained. “He rewrote it. In fact if you want to kind of flip an observation, just like on the front end, it took Nancy Pelosi, as per her mortal statement, remember ‘we need to pass the law to figure out what’s in it,’ it took the Supreme Court to rewrite the law to uphold it.”

He continued: “And clearly rewriting the law is not justified by the imperative constitutional deference. It’s not justified by going to the enth degree to parse the words in such a way as to save it from oblivion.”

David Rivkin, who served in both the Reagan administration and George H.W. Bush administration, said that re-conceiving taxing power troubled him far more.


He also said that re-writing the law wasn’t a judicial function.

“What troubles me far more, is the way he reconceived taxing power, makes it another specie of general police power, at least something that can easily morph into it,” Rivkin said.

Rivkin made his remarks alongside other legal and health policy scholars at the Cato Institute.

In his written opinion on the healthcare law, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote: “The Federal Government does have the power to impose a tax on those without health insurance. Section 5000A is therefore constitutional, because it can reasonably be read as a tax."

“A weird sort of victory for federalism enclosed in a loss”

Legal scholars from across the political spectrum gathered Monday, June 2, at the Cato Institute to discuss the pros and cons of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold the constitutionality of President Obama’s 2010 health care law.
Randy Barnett, a Georgetown Law School professor, said the decision “could have been worse,” and noted that while the healthcare law has been upheld, an advance on at least one front has been made: the scope of the Commerce Clause was not expanded although the individual mandate was upheld.

“As it is we made good law as opposed to bad law on the constitution,” Barnett said.

He also said that reversing the law “is within the power of the electorate.”

Ilya Shapiro, the Senior Constitutional Studies Fellow at the Cato Institute, expressed a similar view.

“Randy is right, this is a weird sort of victory for federalism enclosed in a loss,” he said.

“As I titled my SCOTUS blog yesterday ‘we won everything but the case,’” he continued.

But Barnett also reflected on another lesson from the decision: “five votes on the Supreme Court is not enough…Because if you only have five somebody breaks.”

Barnett made his comments a day after CBS News reported that Chief Justice Roberts switched his views to uphold the healthcare law.

According to that report, a source said that Justice Roberts was initially going to vote against upholding the law, but then switched his views to side with liberals on the court.

“Well we all know what kind of decision this was. First of all it was obvious on the face of the opinion before the reporting took place yesterday that this was a political decision. It was not a legal decision.”

“The legal merits were all on our side,” Barnett said.

Barnett said that if it was a political decision, it was a “foolish move if it was done out of calculation” and “not a smart move because it misreads the politics of the country” at this time, adding that it was an” illegitimate basis to make a constitutional ruling” if political.

‘Easily Reversed’

Barnett held out hope that the taxing power which was invoked to hold the law could be reversed.

“But what is the precedential weight of this decision? How binding is it on future judges? How much respect is it due given how we have a very good idea about how that fifth vote was obtained?”

Barnett said that with any kind of “change in our political culture” the tax part of this decision is not long for this world,” adding that it “could be easily reversed because it is not a weighty precedent,” Barnett said.

However, the he added that if the political culture does change as a result of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the healthcare law, the decision itself would “not pose a barrier to forward progress in limiting the powers of the federal government.”

Michael Cannon, a health policy scholar at the Cato Institute, said that the law was “weaker” and the path to repealing the Affordable Care Act was “clearer than it was one week ago.”

He cited the public backlash against the law, and states’ ability to block new expansions in Medicaid as things going in the direction of repeal.

Taxmageddon!!! haha!!!

It's coming!

State and Local Sales Taxes in 2012

From the Tax Foundation blog:

Introduction

Retail sales taxes are a transparent way to collect tax revenue. While graduated income tax rates and brackets are complex and confusing to many taxpayers, the sales tax is easier to understand: people can reach into their pocket and see the rate printed on a receipt.

Less known, however, are the local sales taxes collected in 36 states. These rates can be substantial, so a state with a moderate state sales tax rate could actually have a very high combined state-local rate compared to other states. This report provides a population-weighted average of local sales taxes in each state in an attempt to give a sense of the statutory local rate for each state.

State and Local Sales Taxes in 2012 || The Tax Foundation

Mommy, where do taxes come from?

Who Pays Taxes || The Peter G. Peterson Foundation


Where Taxes Come From || Peter G. Peterson Foundation

A Constitutional Agenda for Social Conservatives by Gary North

Gary North agrees with me on so many things. He has the same solution to the same-sex marriage/homosexuality debate as I do. You have to read the article to find out.

Social conservatives need to decide: head-banging or the Constitution.

Social liberals want to free up head-banging in these five areas, so as to have more money to spend on head-banging in the areas of federal regulation of the economy.

The correct agenda for social conservatives is simple: vote for Congressmen and Senators who follow these rules: (1) Constitutional authorization of all laws; (2) reduced taxation; (3) budget in surplus; (3) debt reduction; (4) de-funding of the executive. In one phrase: Shrink the federal government. There is only one social conservative who favors this agenda.

It isn't Newt Gingrich.

A Constitutional Agenda for Social Conservatives by Gary North || LewRockwell.com

Peter Schiff on Herman Cain's Hidden Nine

It's really a 9-9-9-9 deal, Schiff says.

However, the plan has deep flaws, the most glaring of which is its creation of a hidden payroll tax which represents a fourth "nine." This serious pitfall has been unmentioned by Mr. Cain and overlooked by those who have analyzed his plan. 

Peter Schiff, Herman Cain's Hidden Nine

A Prophetic Statement About Tax Cuts

From a 2004 column:

“The growing federal debt is virtually certain to lead to offsetting tax increases down the road. Does anyone really believe that in 10 years, when Social Security and Medicare benefits are imminently threatened, Congress will not try to increase revenues to keep the benefits flowing a bit longer?”

Daniel Sahviro, Quoted in "Tax Cuts = Big Government"

Warren Buffett’s Taxing the Rich Won't Solve Deficit, Says Tax Foundation | CNSnews.com

Warren Buffett’s Taxing the Rich Won't Solve Deficit, Says Tax Foundation | CNSnews.com

Also check out: Warren Buffet Does Not Speak For The Rich

Schiff: There are no subsidies for corporate jet owners

He explains:

There are no subsidies for corporate jet owners. The fact that corporations are forced to depreciate jets over a period of five years, rather than being able to fully deduct the expenditure immediately, is not a subsidy but a penalty. Just because commercial airlines are penalized more does not mean other corporations are getting a subsidy

Peter Schiff, Don't Be Fooled by Political Posturing

The Goins Report on the Greek Letter Organization from Hell

C. Goins on the government:

“Government is the Greek letter organization from hell. It's the never-ending order in which you have no say concerning your membership and you always have to pay dues—no matter how active or inactive you are. If you are born, you're in, and you can't get out. If you try, they'll send some blockhead with a badge and a gun to collect your dues. And upon resistance, they’ll throw you away as if you were never in their prestigious organization at all.”

Taken from his forthcoming book (Title TBA)

Tax Cut Clarity

Thomas Sowell recently debunked the current rhetoric of the Bush Tax cut debate. I always knew there was something fishy going on.

Here are the key points:

1)

Let's face it, politics is largely the art of deception, and political rhetoric is largely the art of misstating issues. A classic example is the current debate over whether to give money to the unemployed by extending how long unemployment benefits will be provided, or instead to give "tax cuts to the rich."

2)

Not only are the so-called "tax cuts" not really tax cuts, most of the people called "rich" are not really rich. Rich means having a lot of wealth. But income taxes don't touch wealth. No wonder some billionaires are saying it's OK to raise income taxes. They would still be billionaires if taxes took 100 percent of their current income.

3)

It also takes a lot of brass to talk about taxing "millionaires and billionaires" when most of the people whose taxes the liberals want to raise are neither. Why is so much deception necessary, if your case is good?

4)

Another fashionable political and media deception is making a parallel between giving money to the unemployed versus giving money to "the rich."

When you refrain from raising someone's taxes, you are not "giving" them anything. Even if you were actually cutting their tax rate – which is out of the question today – you would still not be "giving" them anything, but only allowing them to keep more of what they have earned.

Read the rest here.