An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
It’s Not YOUR Money!
Stopping the Largest Tax Hike in History
The Foundry
The largest tax hike in history is due to strike the United States on January 1, 2013. Known as “Taxmageddon,” it would impose $494 billion in higher taxes on the American people in the first year. So terrible would be its impact that yesterday Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Senate Democrats that the country is headed toward a “fiscal cliff” and that Congress must deal with the impending tax nightmare.
On Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced that his chamber will take up the issue before the November election. Knowing Washington’s general reluctance to do anything of substance in an election year, Boehner’s announcement was welcome news given the disastrous ramifications the threat of such a massive tax hike is already having on the economy. That’s according to Mohammed El-Erian, CEO of Pimco, the world’s largest bond trading firm. El-Erian argues a “prolonged political inaction is likely to postpone building plants and purchasing equipment and to discourage them from hiring.” And that is only an inkling of the blow that would strike the economy if these tax hikes actually took effect.
Since Some Folks Have Comprehension Issues….
….I thought this graphic found on Heritage from the IRS might assist in their understanding of the issue:
You’ll also notice, that those in the middle ‘class’ bracket pay more than the tier above them. Wonder why that is? Because the government is doing it’s best to kill the “middle class”.
BIG Government – Alive, Well, and SPENDING
The Bloated Government of America
The Foundry
The General Services Administration blew through $820,000 in taxpayers’ money in a lavish ”team building” trip to Las Vegas, and President Barack Obama is “apoplectic” at the news, according to the president’s campaign advisor, David Axelrod. Obama, he says, has devoted his efforts to saving “tens of billions of dollars” in cutting waste, fraud and inefficiency in government. Yet under President Obama’s leadership, government spending keeps growing irresponsibly, and neither he nor his allies in Congress are doing anything about it.
The latest example came last week when Democratic leadership in the Senate again passed the buck on enacting a budget — on April 29, it will have been three years since the Senate last passed a budget resolution. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D–ND),whose job it is to shepherd a budget through the Senate, said of his decision: “This is the wrong time to vote in committee. This is the wrong time to vote on the floor. I don’t think we will be prepared to vote before the election.” Conrad also said that offering a budget would be futile and “would do little to move us closer to a bipartisan agreement that can actually be adopted.”
The Thieves Of DC
What Tax Day Could Feel Like in 2013
The Foundry
In addition to today being Tax Day, it’s also, coincidentally, “Tax Freedom Day” — meaning that it has taken from January 1 until now for Americans to earn enough money to pay this year’s federal, state, and local tax bill — 29.2% of all our income. In other words, for the first 111 days of the year, everything you earned went straight to Uncle Sam. Compare that to back in 1900, when Americans paid only 5.9% of their income in taxes and Tax Freedom Day came on January 22.
The Tax Foundation reports that because of higher federal income and corporate tax collections, Tax Freedom Day came four days later this year than last. And the bad news is that unless Washington takes action, it will take working Americans 11 more days to meet next year’s tax burden.
You Are Suppose To Know The “Buffet Rule” Is Based On Lies
Tax Gimmicks, Tax Doom
The Foundry
The U.S. Senate could vote today on the gimmicky distraction known as the Buffett Rule — President Obama’s plan to raise taxes on wealthy Americans and job creators in order to supposedly bring “fairness” to the tax code and pay down the debt. As the paper-thin justification for the proposal continues to fade away, the American people are staring down Tax Day, continued joblessness, and the prospect of a major tax meltdown coming on January 1, 2013.
The facts of the Buffett Rule are simple. The President wants millionaires (and small businesses taxed as individuals) to pay a minimum tax of 30 percent. For all of his rhetoric that the measure would “stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade,” the Buffett Rule would bring in only $47 billion in revenue in ten years. To put those numbers in context, President Obama’s budget calls for adding $6.7 trillion to the national debt. So the Buffett Rule would cover just 0.007% of all of Obama’s debt and .001% of Obama’s spending.
None of this even touches on the failure in logic underlying the President’s argument, as we detailed in depth last week. In short, President Obama is employing the Buffett Rule as an election-year class warfare weapon. And he’s aiming it at the highest-earning families and businesses in America who are already shouldering the vast majority of the country’s tax burden. Just one example: The top 1 percent of income earners — those earning more than $380,000 in 2008 — paid more than 38 percent of all federal income taxes while earning 20 percent of all income.
Try A Bit Of Self Discipline, Instead Of Sucking The Well Dry!
The Internet Taxes that Could Be Coming
The Foundry
If you’ve ever bought anything on the Internet, over the phone, or from a catalog, you might have noticed that when you buy from some stores, you don’t pay any state sales tax, but if you buy from other stores, you do. That’s because a Supreme Court decision protected out-of-state businesses from revenue-hungry states. But a new bill working its way through Congress would change all that, turning every online retailer into a sales tax collector. And that’s legislation Congress should reject.
Back in 1992, the Supreme Court ruled in Quill Corporation v. North Dakota that a state cannot force a retailer who doesn’t have any physical presence in that state to collect sales taxes from Internet, phone or catalog sales. So if you ordered a book online from BarnesandNoble.com and there’s a Barnes and Noble store right down the street from your house, you’d have to pay sales tax. But if you ordered that book online from a mom and pop bookstore with one location halfway across the country, they wouldn’t have to collect sales tax from you.
Out Of Nashville
Death Tax Repeal Moves Out of House Finance Subcommittee
Rep Vance Dennis Newsletter
But let me ask….is cutting the tax on food from 5.5% to 5.25% really going to be saving Tennesseans all that much on their grocery bill? The cost of a gallon of milk, or a pound of butter has risen by leaps and bounds over the last couple of years, much more than that .25% that they would be allowing us to keep of our own money. Now, if they REALLY want to make an impression, cut out the food tax altogether. 
Ok, maybe that isn’t an answer, but at least cut it by a FULL 1%!There Ought To Be A Law!
Oh….wait a minute….THERE IS! It’s called the Constitution, which LIMITS the power of the government, NOT the people!
President Obama has touted reports from the Congressional Budget Office claiming his health care law would actually decrease the deficit. But due to a bundle of budget gimmicks and other legislation, calculations show that Obamacare actually adds $698 billion to the deficit. This week’s chart outlines each of those budget gimmicks.
“This morning a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office concludes that the reform we seek would bring $1.3 trillion in deficit reduction over the next two decades. That makes this legislation the most significant effort to reduce deficits since the Balanced Budget Act in the 1990s,” Obama declared two years ago.
CBO actually did project the health care law would reduce the deficit, but that assessment has “always rested on a series of omissions, gimmicks, double-counting of savings, and implausible assumptions that also have not changed since the law was enacted in 2010,” according to James Capretta, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
The CBO report double-counted Medicare savings, which adds $400 billion to the deficit. The Medicare cuts were supposed to pay for both entitlement expansions and future benefits out of the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund.
So, let’s face a few facts here: Barack Hussein Obama, and his minions, have been lying to, cheating, and stealing from the American people. As Reagan said: “It’s not that liberals are ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” All you have to do is listen to Debbie Washerwoman Schultz to know that this is STILL the case. (What a buffoon). They have taken your money, that you worked to earn, and “invested” in companies that anyone in their right mind, with any economic sense, would steer clear of!
They have thrown this overreaching bill in our face, and told us we will like it or else! Or else what? Well, you’ll get fined, and of course, there is always the possibility of spending time in jail because you totally disagree with the idea that the government has the ‘right’ to force you to buy something you don’t need, don’t want, and the country, as a whole, can’t afford.
They lie to seniors, telling them the Republican plans will cut Medicare, and yet, that is exactly what THEY have done. They steal your hard earned money, and give it to people who are nothing more than animals who would go out of their way to murder you in the middle of the street, in a heartbeat, and think nothing of it. They encourage “dissent” in other countries and total anarchy in our own, yet insult and belittle those who disagree with their policies. You know the ones I mean…those who support the Constitution, and would very much appreciate if all elected officials would uphold their oath to ‘support and defend’. Yet when they don’t, and won’t, nothing is ever done so why bother. I honestly question how many who are holding elected office have ever actually read our founding documents? I have no problem responding, that very few know what is even in either of the most important documents, since they have a tendency to misquote, leave out parts, and generally ignore them.
We have a POTUS, who nothing more than a spoiled, narcissistic, little boy, who when he doesn’t get his own way, will go around the elected bodies that supposedly represent the PEOPLE, and sign executive orders. Misuse of power? Oh yeah…and lots of it! Intimidation, voter fraud, outright theft of the PEOPLE’S money. I’d say we have plenty of reason to worry.
Note to Republicans in office: GROW A PAIR!
Gosh! You Mean He Lied? AGAIN?
Color me SHOCKED! /snark
Beware the Taxmageddon
The Foundry
Brace yourself. In a mere 271 days, you and your fellow Americans will be hit with a tax hike the likes of which this country has never seen. The Washington Post aptly called the unprecedented $494 billion tax hike “Taxmageddon,” and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke described it as a “massive fiscal cliff.” Whatever your preferred imagery, it’s a really big deal.
Despite all the warnings, President Barack Obama has kept his silence while Congress has made no apparent effort to prevent this impending calamity to families and the economy. The prevailing wisdom is that “something will get done” in a lame duck session of Congress after the election. But why wait? And why after the election?
Here’s why you should be worried. For starters, remember that this is the same President who in 2009 promised, “if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime.” That’s a vow he’s broken, and in 2013, things are going to get even worse if this year Obama doesn’t lead and Congress doesn’t act. Katy, bar the door, there’s big trouble in store.
Obama-Biden Seek To Kill MORE American Jobs
The Highest Taxes in the World
The Foundry
There aren’t many American-owned companies more iconic than Anheuser-Busch, the famous producer of Budweiser beer based in St. Louis, Missouri. That was true up until 2008, when the Brazilian-Belgian company InBev executed a hostile takeover of the historic brewer, leading to layoffs of more than 1,800 workers. Unfortunately, conditions in the United States are growing ripe for even more takeovers like these to occur, especially now that the nation’s corporate tax rate is officially the highest in the world.
As of yesterday, the U.S. corporate tax rate of 39.2 percent claimed the world’s top spot, edging out Japan which recently lowered its rate from 39.5 percent to 36.8 percent. (The U.S. rate includes the 35 percent federal rate plus the average rate the states add on.) That’s well above the 25 percent average of other developed nations. Heritage’s Curtis Dubay explains the impact on companies based in the United States:
This gaping disparity means every other country that we compete with for new investment is better situated to land that new investment and the jobs that come with it, because the after-tax return from that investment promises to be higher in those lower-taxed nations.
Take A Sugar Cane And……
Sugar under attack in obesity fight
Three California obesity researchers struck a nerve in Tennessee’s sweet tooth last month when they proposed regulating sugar in the same way government regulates tobacco and alcohol.
In the journal Nature , they pegged a litany of chronic illnesses to excess sugar consumption — diabetes, hypertension, fatty liver disease and others. Their article proposed taxing foods with added sugar, restricting purchases to ages 17 and over, and limiting convenience stores in poor neighborhoods.
There is no doubt in my mind….California really IS a granola state….fruits, nuts, and flakes! First off, ya don’t tax people even more, second, ya don’t tell people what they can and cannot eat or drink, and third….it’s called PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY! The whole thing sounds like discrimination against the poor folks to me!
Days before the Nature article published, U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais made a proposal on the other side of the political spectrum: a bill that would bar federal dollars from being used to publicly criticize foods already approved by the Food and Drug Administration. He’d learned federal stimulus funds financed healthy living campaigns that, in part, discouraged drinking sugary soda.
It is not the job of the government to spend OUR money to tell us what we should or shouldn’t drink. Seriously, there are many other ways our funds could be used…usefully….like supporting our men and women in the military! Novel concept.
Even MORE Taxes?
Color me shocked!
Obama’s Hidden Tax Hikes
The Foundry
EXCLUSIVE: It could be said that President Obama has never seen a tax hike he doesn’t like — whether it’s letting the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire, insisting on higher taxes for job creators, and yesterday calling on Congress to raise taxes on the oil industry. But as much as the President wants to raise taxes, Heritage has discovered that there are even more tax hikes hidden in his budget, adding up to a total of $2 trillion in higher taxes.
In a new report, Heritage’s Curtis Dubay uncovers Obama’s hidden tax hikes and finds that the President’s proposed $1.561 trillion tax increase over 10 years is much bigger than advertised. In fact, the President wants to raise taxes by $1.689 trillion – that’s $128 billion more than was reported by the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the President’s FY 2013 budget proposal.
What’s to account for the discrepancy? Dubay explains that OMB reports the tax hikes in areas other than the tax section, misleading readers into believing that the President’s tax hikes are smaller than they are in reality. Among them are the “Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee,” better known as the bank tax, which adds another $61 billion to the President’s tax hike total; a $44 billion tax hike from allowing the IRS to adjust a program integrity cap; a $48 billion increase of the unemployment tax; and a $1 billion hike of user fees for commercial navigation of inland waterways.
Our Money Pays For Their Good Times
Dear Mr & Mrs Obama:
We would very much like our tax money back. The Mr and I could really use a vacation about now. It’s been a really tough (and expensive due to health care costs thanks to ObamaCare) 18 months. Not sure what our share would be, after all the costs of the many Obama vacations are totaled up, but I’m fairly sure we could spend at least one week in Jamaica…preferably two.
Thank you in advance.
Mr & Mrs Ol’ Broad
Picture shared by Jerry.
Harry Reid – Spending With Impunity
I wonder why Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Hussein Obama didn’t make this list?
Budget? Why Follow A Budget?
The Foundry
Families and businesses have budgets, yet Washington doesn’t — and it hasn’t for the last three years. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) doesn’t think this major omission is that big of a deal, and the White House has no opinion on the matter. Fortunately, there are leaders in the House who see the importance of passing a budget and getting runaway spending and escalating debt under control.
For Congress, the budget is an outline of how and where money will be spent across the federal government and how high taxes and borrowing will be. The budget guides all spending, tax, and reform bills that must be passed during the year, and Congress is obligated to pass one every year. Despite those facts — and even with a $15 trillion national debt — Senator Reid last week said, “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year,” disavowing the entire budgeting process — and his responsibility, right along with it.
On Wednesday, ABC’s Jake Tapper asked White House press secretary Jay Carney where the President stands on the Senate’s failure to pass a budget, particularly in light of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s statement that the lack of a budget has had an adverse effect on economic growth. Carney’s response: “Well, I don’t have an opinion to express on how the Senate does its business with regards to this issue.”
A Hand UP…Not A Hand OUT
2 Thessalonians 3:10 For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.
I wonder if this is why the Democrats in the Senate refuse to come up with a budget?
Dependence on Government Highest in History
The Foundry
When John F. Kennedy was President, just over a quarter of federal spending went to fund programs paying for some 21.7 million Americans to be dependent on Uncle Sam. But as high as that spending and dependence on the federal government was then, it has exploded today, with one in five Americans — more than 67.3 million — depending on Washington for assistance.
