By CHARLES HURT IN DC and DAVID SEIFMAN AND JENNIFER FERMINO IN NY, Post Wire Services
Last updated: 8:59 am
July 16, 2009
Posted: 2:36 am
July 16, 2009
Congressional plans to fund a massive health-care overhaul could have a job-killing effect on New York, creating a tax rate of nearly 60 percent for the state's top earners and possibly pressuring small-business owners to shed workers.
New York's top income bracket could reach as high as 57 percent -- rates not seen in three decades -- to pay for the massive health coverage proposed by House Democrats this week.
The top rate in New York City, home to many of the state's wealthiest people, would be 58.68 percent, the Washington-based Tax Foundation said in a report yesterday.
That means New York's top earners, small-business owners and most dynamic entrepreneurs will be facing new fees and penalties.
The $544 billion tax hike would violate one of President Obama's ironclad campaign promises: No family will pay higher tax rates than they would have paid in the 1990s.
Under the bill, three new tax brackets would be created for high earners, with a top rate of 45 percent for families making more than $1 million. That would be the highest income-tax rate since 1986, when the top rate was 50 percent.
The legislation is especially onerous for business owners, in part because it penalizes employers with a payroll bigger than $400,000 some 8 percent of wages if they don't offer health care.
But the cost of the buy-in to the program may be so prohibitive that it will dissuade owners from growing their businesses -- a scary prospect in the midst of a recession.
Obama took to the airwaves yesterday with ads and TV interviews promoting the need to reform health care.
As a Senate health committee passed a different version of a health-care reform bill - a milestone for the issue - Obama said on NBC, "The American people have to realize that there's no such thing as a free lunch."
And in a Rose Garden speech, he said the "status quo" on health care is "threatening the financial stability of families, of businesses, and of government. It's unsustainable, and it has to change."
Asked if Obama supports the surtax on wealthiest Americans even though it would break a campaign pledge, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said only, "It's a process that we're watching."
Republicans in Washington and small-business defenders in New York said the House legislation would effectively place a stranglehold on businesses while running off top earners.
"Placing a big tax burden on the small-business community would rob them of the resources they need to create the jobs that will lead us out of the recession," said Tom Donohue, president of the US Chamber of Commerce.
"If there's one sure way to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, this is it."
Richard Lipsky, a lobbyist for small stores and businesses in New York City, warned that "in the middle of a recession, it's a very strange way to legislate."
"According to what we've read, the House health-insurance plan would have a job-crippling impact on neighborhood stores and other small businesses because they put mandates on these businesses that would prevent them from hiring people because of the cost of the plan," Lipsky said.
Under the House plan, businesses with payrolls of $400,000 or more would pay an 8 percent penalty for uninsured workers, while companies with payrolls between $250,000 and $400,000 would pay slightly smaller penalties.
Adding to this burden, said Michael Moran of the State Business Council of New York, is that New York is already a high-tax state.
"Any additional taxes make New York even less competitive," he said.
New York would become the third-most-hostile place for top earners to live under the proposed new surtaxes supported by House Democrats and championed by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY).
Also hit would be individuals earning $280,000 annually and families making $350,000 a year.
The profits from small businesses would also be taxed on the back end.
Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City, an umbrella organization representing the city's major businesses, said that the estimated top marginal tax rate of 57 percent for New York actually underestimates the potential impact on businesses.
That's because it doesn't include the city's burdensome unincorporated-business tax, which snares many entrepreneurs.
"It could be between 62 and 63 percent," she said.
If the House plan passes, Wylde said, "There literally, at this point, is very strong reason to relocate your family and your business outside New York."
A lot of small businesses would be hit with the penalties for not insuring workers and get hit with the surtaxes, Moran warned.
"Many small businesses file their business taxes under personal income," he said. "That's the way the tax law is written. Small business, which is really where most of the job creation takes place, could be hit hard.
According to the city's Department for Small Business Services, there are some 220,000 small businesses in the five boroughs. The agency does not keep track of how many offer health insurance.
"It's something that's going to kill jobs. That's the result," said Stephanie Cathcart, spokeswoman for the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
Among the most egregious provisions of the House proposal, she said, is a requirement that businesses pay the cost of 72.4 percent of individual health plans and 65 percent of family plans.
Those that don't hit the mark would face the payroll tax penalty
Keep in mind, this doesn't include all the other new taxes and increased cost connected to the cap and trade bill.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Arn't they all hate crimes?
Posted by Bobby Eberle
July 16, 2009 at 6:57 am
As the Senate debates the final provisions of a $680 billion defense bill, Democrats are trying to poison the water by adding a hate crimes bill to the package. It's quite obvious that hate crimes legislation and a defense authorization bill have nothing in common and should not be voted on together.
In addition, where is it written that one group, one gender, one class of people are more special and worthy of more protection than another group? Only in left-wing America. Equal protection under the law? Not any more.
The federal hate crimes bill which is sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) has been attached as an amendment by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to the defense appropriations bill. As noted in The Boston Globe, "Most Republicans oppose the legislation, saying it infringes on states' rights or could lead to the criminalization of religious expressions of opposition to homosexuality."
Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, has called for a vote, requiring 60 supporters, to move forward on the hate crimes measure. That vote could come as early as today, but timing for a final vote on the amendment was uncertain.
Current hate crimes law applies to acts of violence motivated by prejudice against a person's race, color, national origin, or religion. That would expand under the legislation to include crimes targeting people because of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
Sen. John McCain spoke out against the move on Wednesday, saying, "Those of us who oppose this legislation -- and it is important legislation -- will be faced with a dilemma of choosing between a bill which can harm, in my view, the United States of America and its judicial system and a bill defending the nation. I don't think that's fair to any member of this body."
One of the main controversies (outside of the fact that the entire premise of "hate" crimes is wrong) is that the new legislation would cover sexual orientation. Religious groups, which teach that homosexuality is wrong, are obviously concerned on what this bill would do to their ability to promote their teachings.
According to a story in the Associated Press:
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other supporters also stressed that religious leaders or others who voice objections to homosexuality could not be held liable. The bill "does not criminalize speech or hateful thoughts," he said. "It seeks only to punish action, violent action, that undermines the core values of our nation."
So, what happens if some nut-job sits in a church sermon and then goes out and kills someone based on what he heard in church? Without ANY form of hate crimes legislation, that person would be tried for murder. But now, since those on the left feel that a murder charge doesn't send the right message, the criminal would be charged with a hate crime. But then the guy states that he did it because of what he learned in church.... that he was following God's will. Now what?
The bill is bad, and it has no place being attached to the defense bill. If you'd like to contact your senators, just use the link below. No one deserves special treatment or favored treatment. This is America where we should all be treated equally.
July 16, 2009 at 6:57 am
As the Senate debates the final provisions of a $680 billion defense bill, Democrats are trying to poison the water by adding a hate crimes bill to the package. It's quite obvious that hate crimes legislation and a defense authorization bill have nothing in common and should not be voted on together.
In addition, where is it written that one group, one gender, one class of people are more special and worthy of more protection than another group? Only in left-wing America. Equal protection under the law? Not any more.
The federal hate crimes bill which is sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) has been attached as an amendment by Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) to the defense appropriations bill. As noted in The Boston Globe, "Most Republicans oppose the legislation, saying it infringes on states' rights or could lead to the criminalization of religious expressions of opposition to homosexuality."
Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, has called for a vote, requiring 60 supporters, to move forward on the hate crimes measure. That vote could come as early as today, but timing for a final vote on the amendment was uncertain.
Current hate crimes law applies to acts of violence motivated by prejudice against a person's race, color, national origin, or religion. That would expand under the legislation to include crimes targeting people because of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
Sen. John McCain spoke out against the move on Wednesday, saying, "Those of us who oppose this legislation -- and it is important legislation -- will be faced with a dilemma of choosing between a bill which can harm, in my view, the United States of America and its judicial system and a bill defending the nation. I don't think that's fair to any member of this body."
One of the main controversies (outside of the fact that the entire premise of "hate" crimes is wrong) is that the new legislation would cover sexual orientation. Religious groups, which teach that homosexuality is wrong, are obviously concerned on what this bill would do to their ability to promote their teachings.
According to a story in the Associated Press:
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other supporters also stressed that religious leaders or others who voice objections to homosexuality could not be held liable. The bill "does not criminalize speech or hateful thoughts," he said. "It seeks only to punish action, violent action, that undermines the core values of our nation."
So, what happens if some nut-job sits in a church sermon and then goes out and kills someone based on what he heard in church? Without ANY form of hate crimes legislation, that person would be tried for murder. But now, since those on the left feel that a murder charge doesn't send the right message, the criminal would be charged with a hate crime. But then the guy states that he did it because of what he learned in church.... that he was following God's will. Now what?
The bill is bad, and it has no place being attached to the defense bill. If you'd like to contact your senators, just use the link below. No one deserves special treatment or favored treatment. This is America where we should all be treated equally.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
If you want to see where we are going with this administration, look at Califirnia.
While Karl Marx believed that socialism—and ultimately communism—would replace capitalism as the morally superior societal system, it was Margaret Thatcher who observed, “The trouble with socialism is that it always runs out of other people’s money.” Now, after 50 years of steady indoctrination by California’s media and education establishments, acquiescence to the soft tyranny of socialism dominates the culture, business climate and legislature. A byproduct of this is California’s massive government spending machine, where wealth redistribution is the organizing principle. Despite being home to the eighth-largest economy in the world, California is also teetering on insolvency.
THE PERFECT STORM
Consider California’s perfect fiscal storm. Although Arnold Schwarzenegger came to the governorship in 2003 as a populist reformer, California’s cost of government has risen 40 percent since his election. California’s current budget includes $103 billion in spending. And due to the contracting economy, its shortfall over the next 18 months is projected to be a staggering $41 billion. This shortfall, if financed, would represent $1,108 of new indebtedness for every one of its 37 million citizens. Yet California is already the most indebted state in the union with a half-trillion dollars in outstanding debt obligation.
Milton Friedman observed that one can’t have an open-border policy and a welfare state—the incentives are all wrong. Despite the 1996 federal Welfare Reform Act, California is one of the few states that still provides lifetime welfare benefits. In the mid-1990s, the National Academy of Sciences found that each native-born household paid $1,100 in additional taxes to accommodate new immigrants and illegal aliens. That study is more than 10 years old. Now, if President Barack Obama and the Democrat-led U. S. Congress do grant amnesty to the millions of illegals throughout the country, through chain migration, millions of new welfare recipients will pour into California.
California’s bonds have the lowest rating in country, downgraded to an “A” (most states are AAA), which has sent the cost of the state’s debt service soaring ever higher. The most productive taxpayers, largely native-born baby boomers, are retiring and leaving. The state is now populated by a majority of net recipients of the transfer of wealth, while the number of wealth-producing taxpayers is rapidly diminishing.
A March 4 lead editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle betrays the prevailing mindset here—a belief that the election of Obama signals that\ America will finally repair the ills of capitalism and that ever more wealth redistribution will be the way forward for the nation. The Chronicle editorial board asked, “After the last three decades have resulted in the most staggering income inequality since 1929, are we ready to embrace a new philosophy on taxes, on the role of government, on the question of what it means to contribute to your country?”
Recently, Obama chafed at being asked if he was a socialist, presumably as would most any other California politician if asked the same question. Yet for those status quo politicians, the facts on the ground are irrefutable. In order to avoid an astounding $41 billion projected deficit, Gov. Schwarzenegger has cobbled together a one-year budget deal with the legislature, a deal that can be extended years into the future with the approval of voters in an upcoming special election this month. The budget deal assumes $12 billion in federal bailout money and adds sales taxes, car license tax, gasoline tax and income tax to the myriad other wealth transfers such as multiple taxes on savings. The net effect is that the average Californian will now pay more in taxes than the residents of any other state, with some Californians seeing their government confiscate 70 percent of their income. We Californians are living in a quasi-socialist state where most intellectual elites and elected officials believe that it is the proper role of government to level individuals’ incomes. We are lurching ever leftward toward that mythical egalitarian Marxist utopia.
California, for most of the last century, when it gave birth to the movie industry and later became a television industry capital, has led the nation in setting new trends. It has long been a place where new cultural phenomena were born and rapidly spread across the country. The vital question that needs an answer is this: Will California’s balkanized culture, fiscal insolvency and devotion to Marx be harbingers for the now all Democrat-controlled federal government? Will the nation become what California already is?
CALIFORNIA BEGETS A NATIONAL LOSS OF INNOCENCE
Today, there are tens of billions of dollars flowing into California’s treasury for education, counseling and human development programs. So one might logically conclude that the Golden State would have by now found the formula for the near elimination of crime. Investigative reporter, Jack Cashill, in his book, “What’s the Matter With California?” reports that, in 1953, there were 276 murders in the entire state. Over the years 2003-07, there were more murders in L.A. County than troops killed in Iraq. What could be the root cause for this? Cashill’s answer: fatherlessness.
Cashill points out that, in 1960, California fatefully passed the Aid to Dependent Children Act, which made it a money-making endeavor for a teenager to get pregnant, move out of her parents’ home and receive funds for her own apartment and expenses. The state’s policy unwittingly subsidized the breakup of countless at-risk families and led to vast numbers of black and Latino children being born out of wedlock, many of whom have grown up to be gangsters. (In 1970, California also passed its No-Fault Divorce law and began recording 275,000 divorces annually.) Controlling for both inflation and the population differential, by 1979, two decades after the Aid to Dependent Children Act, the state was collecting three times more real tax dollars, yet the criminals were committing roughly three times the crime. And the crime rate continued to climb. Over the last 15 years, the state’s prison population rose from 23,264 in 1993 to 168,035 in 2008—a seven-fold increase, and based on demographic research, it is closely related to the increase in the number of unwed children having children. Appallingly, the recent report on new births in the United States from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released in March, revealed a new high of 4.3 million babies born in 2007 with 40 percent born to unwed mothers, a figure that will likely only fuel the crime wave American children will face.
Yet the California media, both television and Hollywood, have been relentless in their campaign to mainstream the culture of illegitimacy and single-parenthood while they’ve heaped invective on conventional suburban two-parent America. The media’s role in promoting fatherlessness was first fully exposed in the early 1990s when the then-popular television show “Murphy Brown” was called out publicly by Vice President Dan Quayle for glamorizing unwed motherhood when the show’s title character, played by Candice Bergen, had a child out of wedlock. Predictably, media pundits across the country took the bait and heaped scorn on the vice president. Their universal contempt demonstrated how pervasive and pernicious the media campaign had been. Considering that responsible studies clearly show that there is no stronger correlation to an eventual life of crime than to that of being born to an unwed mother, it is not surprising that a culture of illegitimacy combined with the enormous earning power of illegal drug sales—popularized and spread across the country by academia, media and pop culture—has spread crime throughout California.
ONE-PARTY RULE IN CALIFORNIA
The Left has now achieved a monopoly on power in California largely through a gerrymander where elected officials from both parties, under the previous Democratic administration and Democrat-controlled legislature, were allowed to draw their own districts so that the lines ensured the reelection of incumbents while at the same time cementing control by the Left. This has fundamentally changed political process here from a representative democracy to a kind of oligarchic kleptocracy.
So effective was the California gerrymander, in the 2004 general election, not one seat of the 80 in the state Assembly, of the 20 in the state Senate, not one of 53 U.S. congressional districts changed party. As former three-term Congressman Tom Campbell observed, “Could it have happened by chance? No.” Clearly the system is not just rigged. It’s completely rigged.
Schwarzenegger came to the governorship in 2003 via the recall election of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. In 2005, Schwarzenegger decided to gamble much of his considerable political capital by calling for a special election that placed on the ballot an ambitious list of conservative initiatives aimed at breaking the monopoly of the Democrat controlled legislature. One of these initiatives was a redistricting measure aimed at restoring some legitimacy to the electoral process. But the quarter million state employees, the teachers, nurses, prison guards and municipal and county-employee unions had bought and paid for their government. So they all lined up against him, spent massively and even mortgaged a union headquarters building in order to spend on that election like never before. All of the governor’s initiatives were soundly defeated, after which he lurched leftward. As Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute wrote, “Arnold went into a funk. Worse than a funk, he veered sharply left and seemingly threw in the towel with the Democrats.”
Similarly, in early February of this year, it was revealed that the Obama administration had plans to remove jurisdiction over the Census from the Commerce Department to the White House. This caused many to worry about a White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel-led attempt to gerrymander the entire country. Census numbers are arrived at through modeling, which in turn is developed through “assumptions.” A Republican congressional staffer said, according to the Washington Post, “Hijacking the census from the Commerce Department and letting it be run out of Rahm’s office is like putting PETA in charge of issuing hunting permits.”
That same week, the Obama administration nominated a token Republican, Sen. Judd Gregg, N.H., to run the commerce Department. In the space of a week, Gregg accepted the cabinet position and then resigned, citing fundamental disagreements with the president’s policies and making Obama 0-for-2 in his attempts to fill the Commerce job. One has to wonder if California’s success at gerrymandering inspired Emanuel’s attempt to craft a permanent one-party rule throughout the entire country using essentially the same tool.
THE DISHONESTY OF SOCIALIST ONE PARTY-RULE
California author, philosopher and radio host Rabbi Daniel Lapin is a member of the college speaker’s circuit and a man who tries to undo some of socialist indoctrination that passes as education on college campuses here. One of his more provocative talks is titled “Why Socialism Is Evil.” He explains to California college students that capitalism’s stated goal is freedom while socialism’s stated goal is equality and that, in the end, capitalism does deliver freedom, yet socialism never delivers equality. Instead, socialist regimes pick winners and losers and can do so only through the threat of lethal force. Socialism is, therefore, inherently dishonest. It must constantly obfuscate the fact that its winners are the regime’s faithful supporters and its favored aggrieved groups. Its winners are those picked to be the officers of the vast governmental agencies socialism creates and expands. Its winners’ children are given preferential entrance to elite universities. Its families gain access to special health care programs, unavailable to the masses, once the health care industry is nationalized. Socialism’s losers are those who are expected to fund the source of their own servitude.
While the average college student may not get it, the average California taxpayer cannot overlook his own growing servility to the state and the obvious false promises inherent in one-party socialist rule. Plus, one can clearly see this exact perfidy is on display now in our nation’s capital where one-party socialist rule is just 100 days old. In Charles Krauthammer’s much quoted column, “The Great Non Sequitur,” he exposes Obama’s dishonesty by showing that the president’s massive spending agenda is one gigantic con, one of the largest bait-and-switch operations in human history.
After listing the causes of our current fiscal calamity, “a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the banking industry … Fannie and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington into improvident loans, corrupted bond-rating agencies … the easy money policies of Alan Greenspan’s Fed … greedy house flippers, deceitful home buyers,” Krauthammer points out that our new president claims that he will “redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap and trade tax on energy, and a major federalization of education.” He concludes, “Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core.”
The near collapse of the financial system has nothing to do with the absence of universal health care. But the crisis does create for Obama, the “psychological conditions—the sense of crisis bordering on fear itself—for enacting his ‘Big Bang’ agenda to federalize and or socialize health care, education, and energy.”
One of many galling aspects of Obama’s con is that, in just three months, he has proposed spending that will add more to the U.S. deficit than all the previous presidents combined, from George Washington through George W. Bush, a level of debt that a growing number of economists term “generational theft” and believe is not sustainable and cannot be repaid. Yet he still hasn’t presented the nation a coherent plan to stabilize the banking crisis.
Former Obama advisor Warren Buffet terms the current crisis an “economic Pearl Harbor” and has parted ways with the administration over its desire to enact a far-left agenda rather than focus on finding solid free-market solutions. And if the White House follows its plan to exploit a serious crisis, it is one that may well live in infamy.
MUCH OF OBAMA’S AGENDA IS ALREADY IN PLACE IN CALIFORNIA
On Oct. 17, 2008, the Wall Street Journal published an enormously prophetic lead editorial titled “A Liberal Supermajority.” With the election still three weeks away, the piece presciently predicted the various programs that Obama would attempt to implement, if elected, in order to create vast numbers of new Democratic voters and thereby permanent Democratic rule over the nation. He would do this in much the same way that President Franklin Roosevelt did as a result of the Great Depression.
Obama feigns adoration of Lincoln when he is actually following the lead of FDR and is the product of modern Democratic machines that run big cities (such as Chicago) and whole states (such as California). Many of the programs Obama campaigned on are already in place in California. For example:
Union Supremacy: The new administration has let its union supporters know that, due to their longsuffering support for the Democratic Party, they will be rewarded with the passage of the Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act. In actuality, if passed, it will unleash union thugs on small and large businesses all across the country, abolishing the secret ballot and driving up union membership.
In California the state employee unions are already the most powerful force behind the one-party rule.
Green Power: Obama wants to pass massive carbon-emissions taxes on businesses, which will supposedly provide billions of dollars in new government revenue in order to fund new programs such as universal health care. Additionally, he wants to create a new federal agency (likely staffed with Democratic supporters) whose preposterous mission is perfect in that it can never succeed and therefore never end: the mission to stop climate change.
Tom McClintock, the newly elected Republican U.S. congressman and one of the few California elected officials with impeccable conservative credentials, spoke to me about Schwarzenegger’s emissions law already on the books, passed in 2006 by California voters. McClintock described, in apocalyptic terms reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” the implications of the measure: “AB 32 is the most radical reduction of carbon emissions anywhere on the planet. It calls for a 25 percent reduction of carbon dioxide by 2020, a mandate that can’t be met even if we removed every car on the road in California. It will mean systematically shutting down entire sectors of California’s economy with grave implications for agriculture, cargo, cement production, construction, manufacturing, energy production, distilling, baking. It is now being implemented by the Air Resources Board, which is taking actions necessary to shut down commercial enterprises in California.”
Election Corruption: Following California’s gerrymandered lead, the White House has not only signaled that it would like to make the Census an administration-owned program but also doubled down by adding to the stimulus bill $1 billion in old-fashioned slush funds for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG). The program gives local politicians wide latitude when spending these monies. ACORN, which has been cited in a dozen states for creating bogus Democratic voter registrations, loves CDBG because it is adept at lobbying for CDBG funds. The Wall Street Journal and others have predicted that, with this access topublic funds, ACORN can open offices for upcoming elections with teams of workers who can register fictitious Democratic voters on a nationwide scale.
Marxist-Inspired Taxation: The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board asserted that the election of Obama hopefully signals the beginning of a new era when the U.S. government can finally address the “problem” of “income inequality,” when the tax code can finally be used to establish “fairness” among its subjects. But Art Laffer and Stephen Moore in their recent book, “The End of Prosperity,” demonstrate that the bottom 20 percent of wage earners saw their incomes grow by 109 percent over the decade from 1996 to 2005, while the top 1 percent, which shoulders 40 percent of all federal income taxes, saw their incomes fall 23 percent. Also, as McClintock points out, the new taxes levied against Californians will not produce the higher revenues projected by the governor and legislature but will, instead, assuredly drive more of the overtaxed populace out of the state. The Chronicle embodies the collectivist worldview that passes for wisdom among the majority of California’s ruling elite and citizenry.
And Obama has betrayed his Marxist worldview on numerous occasions such as the time he told “Joe the Plumber” that he just “needed to spread the wealth around.” But never was his socialism more thoroughly exposed during the campaign than during the Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia. ABC’s Charlie Gibson asked him why he wanted to increase the capital gains tax when both Presidents Clinton and Bush lowered it and both times “revenue from the tax increased.”
“Well, Charlie,” Obama replied, “what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for the purposes of fairness.” He then went on with a preposterous fabrication about how the government needed to punish the top 50 hedge-fund managers for making $29 billion dollars last year. This should have been a stunning revelation for clear-thinking Democrats. Here was their candidate for president admitting that he did not mind if his tax policy damages the country and lowers revenue to the Treasury as long as it can be used for a higher purpose—a tool to conduct class warfare.
THERE’S HOPE FOR A SECOND GREAT CALIFORNIA TAX REVOLT
It should be noted that, in 1978, California, ever the trendsetter, was the first state to successfully stage a tax revolt through ballot initiatives. Laffer and Moore describe the 1978 initiative (Prop. 13) as the most significant tax revolt since the Boston Tea Party and one that set the stage for Reagan’s supply-side revolution two years later. They point out that, in California 30 years ago, there was also a housing crisis due to thousands of Californians, many of them elderly citizens living on fixed incomes, who were losing their homes because they could not pay the escalating property taxes that were assessed at a 3.5 percent rate.
The 1978 initiative slashed the tax to 1 percent and mandated that any tax increases had to be passed by a supermajority of two-thirds in both houses. Big business, labor, the media, academia and virtually every other special interest group came out against the measure, predicting doom if it passed. The Los Angeles Times called Prop. 13’s sponsors, Paul Gann and Howard Jarvis, “the chief agitators for this expanding group of disgruntled taxpayers.” The UCLA business school predicted a loss of 450,000 jobs in the state. The measure passed by 20 points.
Laffer and Moore show that, to this day, all the Prop. 13 opponents were wrong and continue to lie about its aftermath. While the measure brought the tax burden down from $124.57 per $1,000 of income to $95 per $1,000 over the next 10 years, housing prices soared, 3 million new jobs were created and tax revenues to the state more than doubled. So much for the liberal mantra that holds that tax cuts benefit only the rich. Yet today, one of the provisions the state’s Republican governor is now seeking in California’s special election this month is the ability to rescind the two-thirds supermajority provision so that the state can more easily raise taxes and pass bloated budgets.
However, there is hope in numbers. Approximately 40 percent of the 37 million Californians are right-of-center voters, and there are signs that this vast army is motivated, mad, eager to be called to muster and ready for the next tax revolt to begin. Among this nascent revolution’s emerging generals is Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA.org). His think tank, founded in 1978 by Prop. 13’s co-sponsor, has thousands of members and supporters who provide Coupal with the means to run his current hard-hitting media campaign against Schwarzenegger’s Prop. 1A that will allow the state to extend the new tax deal into the future. Due to his lack of guiding principles, the governor’s special election agenda this time is being attacked by his former base—the conservatives.
As California’s May special election impends, the other force driving the revolt is conservative talk radio, which in California dominates in audience share versus their competitors who offer left-of-center, “mainstream” news talk or music. On the powerful L.A. station KFI, the hosts of the prime drive-time show, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, in March, organized a taxpayer rally (a neo-tea party like those that have sprung up all over the country.) On air, during the days preceding the event, the hosts wondered aloud if Californians had “become sheep” accepting oppressive government and would therefore not show up at the Slide bare Café in Fullerton for the rally. The event brought out 8,000 people who let the media there know that they were mad as hell.
For many in California, both talk radio and the initiative process give us a way of circumventing one-party rule, a way of connecting to the pure democracy invented by our Greek ancestors of the fifth century B.C. They connect us to our heritage where the men of the Athenian Assembly were provided the opportunity to speak to every other Athenian citizen soldier and the right to cast a vote on vital matters concerning war and peace. Because we still have access to the initiative process and the radio waves, there is still hope that we can reverse our slide into servitude.
THE PERFECT STORM
Consider California’s perfect fiscal storm. Although Arnold Schwarzenegger came to the governorship in 2003 as a populist reformer, California’s cost of government has risen 40 percent since his election. California’s current budget includes $103 billion in spending. And due to the contracting economy, its shortfall over the next 18 months is projected to be a staggering $41 billion. This shortfall, if financed, would represent $1,108 of new indebtedness for every one of its 37 million citizens. Yet California is already the most indebted state in the union with a half-trillion dollars in outstanding debt obligation.
Milton Friedman observed that one can’t have an open-border policy and a welfare state—the incentives are all wrong. Despite the 1996 federal Welfare Reform Act, California is one of the few states that still provides lifetime welfare benefits. In the mid-1990s, the National Academy of Sciences found that each native-born household paid $1,100 in additional taxes to accommodate new immigrants and illegal aliens. That study is more than 10 years old. Now, if President Barack Obama and the Democrat-led U. S. Congress do grant amnesty to the millions of illegals throughout the country, through chain migration, millions of new welfare recipients will pour into California.
California’s bonds have the lowest rating in country, downgraded to an “A” (most states are AAA), which has sent the cost of the state’s debt service soaring ever higher. The most productive taxpayers, largely native-born baby boomers, are retiring and leaving. The state is now populated by a majority of net recipients of the transfer of wealth, while the number of wealth-producing taxpayers is rapidly diminishing.
A March 4 lead editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle betrays the prevailing mindset here—a belief that the election of Obama signals that\ America will finally repair the ills of capitalism and that ever more wealth redistribution will be the way forward for the nation. The Chronicle editorial board asked, “After the last three decades have resulted in the most staggering income inequality since 1929, are we ready to embrace a new philosophy on taxes, on the role of government, on the question of what it means to contribute to your country?”
Recently, Obama chafed at being asked if he was a socialist, presumably as would most any other California politician if asked the same question. Yet for those status quo politicians, the facts on the ground are irrefutable. In order to avoid an astounding $41 billion projected deficit, Gov. Schwarzenegger has cobbled together a one-year budget deal with the legislature, a deal that can be extended years into the future with the approval of voters in an upcoming special election this month. The budget deal assumes $12 billion in federal bailout money and adds sales taxes, car license tax, gasoline tax and income tax to the myriad other wealth transfers such as multiple taxes on savings. The net effect is that the average Californian will now pay more in taxes than the residents of any other state, with some Californians seeing their government confiscate 70 percent of their income. We Californians are living in a quasi-socialist state where most intellectual elites and elected officials believe that it is the proper role of government to level individuals’ incomes. We are lurching ever leftward toward that mythical egalitarian Marxist utopia.
California, for most of the last century, when it gave birth to the movie industry and later became a television industry capital, has led the nation in setting new trends. It has long been a place where new cultural phenomena were born and rapidly spread across the country. The vital question that needs an answer is this: Will California’s balkanized culture, fiscal insolvency and devotion to Marx be harbingers for the now all Democrat-controlled federal government? Will the nation become what California already is?
CALIFORNIA BEGETS A NATIONAL LOSS OF INNOCENCE
Today, there are tens of billions of dollars flowing into California’s treasury for education, counseling and human development programs. So one might logically conclude that the Golden State would have by now found the formula for the near elimination of crime. Investigative reporter, Jack Cashill, in his book, “What’s the Matter With California?” reports that, in 1953, there were 276 murders in the entire state. Over the years 2003-07, there were more murders in L.A. County than troops killed in Iraq. What could be the root cause for this? Cashill’s answer: fatherlessness.
Cashill points out that, in 1960, California fatefully passed the Aid to Dependent Children Act, which made it a money-making endeavor for a teenager to get pregnant, move out of her parents’ home and receive funds for her own apartment and expenses. The state’s policy unwittingly subsidized the breakup of countless at-risk families and led to vast numbers of black and Latino children being born out of wedlock, many of whom have grown up to be gangsters. (In 1970, California also passed its No-Fault Divorce law and began recording 275,000 divorces annually.) Controlling for both inflation and the population differential, by 1979, two decades after the Aid to Dependent Children Act, the state was collecting three times more real tax dollars, yet the criminals were committing roughly three times the crime. And the crime rate continued to climb. Over the last 15 years, the state’s prison population rose from 23,264 in 1993 to 168,035 in 2008—a seven-fold increase, and based on demographic research, it is closely related to the increase in the number of unwed children having children. Appallingly, the recent report on new births in the United States from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released in March, revealed a new high of 4.3 million babies born in 2007 with 40 percent born to unwed mothers, a figure that will likely only fuel the crime wave American children will face.
Yet the California media, both television and Hollywood, have been relentless in their campaign to mainstream the culture of illegitimacy and single-parenthood while they’ve heaped invective on conventional suburban two-parent America. The media’s role in promoting fatherlessness was first fully exposed in the early 1990s when the then-popular television show “Murphy Brown” was called out publicly by Vice President Dan Quayle for glamorizing unwed motherhood when the show’s title character, played by Candice Bergen, had a child out of wedlock. Predictably, media pundits across the country took the bait and heaped scorn on the vice president. Their universal contempt demonstrated how pervasive and pernicious the media campaign had been. Considering that responsible studies clearly show that there is no stronger correlation to an eventual life of crime than to that of being born to an unwed mother, it is not surprising that a culture of illegitimacy combined with the enormous earning power of illegal drug sales—popularized and spread across the country by academia, media and pop culture—has spread crime throughout California.
ONE-PARTY RULE IN CALIFORNIA
The Left has now achieved a monopoly on power in California largely through a gerrymander where elected officials from both parties, under the previous Democratic administration and Democrat-controlled legislature, were allowed to draw their own districts so that the lines ensured the reelection of incumbents while at the same time cementing control by the Left. This has fundamentally changed political process here from a representative democracy to a kind of oligarchic kleptocracy.
So effective was the California gerrymander, in the 2004 general election, not one seat of the 80 in the state Assembly, of the 20 in the state Senate, not one of 53 U.S. congressional districts changed party. As former three-term Congressman Tom Campbell observed, “Could it have happened by chance? No.” Clearly the system is not just rigged. It’s completely rigged.
Schwarzenegger came to the governorship in 2003 via the recall election of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis. In 2005, Schwarzenegger decided to gamble much of his considerable political capital by calling for a special election that placed on the ballot an ambitious list of conservative initiatives aimed at breaking the monopoly of the Democrat controlled legislature. One of these initiatives was a redistricting measure aimed at restoring some legitimacy to the electoral process. But the quarter million state employees, the teachers, nurses, prison guards and municipal and county-employee unions had bought and paid for their government. So they all lined up against him, spent massively and even mortgaged a union headquarters building in order to spend on that election like never before. All of the governor’s initiatives were soundly defeated, after which he lurched leftward. As Steven Hayward of the Pacific Research Institute wrote, “Arnold went into a funk. Worse than a funk, he veered sharply left and seemingly threw in the towel with the Democrats.”
Similarly, in early February of this year, it was revealed that the Obama administration had plans to remove jurisdiction over the Census from the Commerce Department to the White House. This caused many to worry about a White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel-led attempt to gerrymander the entire country. Census numbers are arrived at through modeling, which in turn is developed through “assumptions.” A Republican congressional staffer said, according to the Washington Post, “Hijacking the census from the Commerce Department and letting it be run out of Rahm’s office is like putting PETA in charge of issuing hunting permits.”
That same week, the Obama administration nominated a token Republican, Sen. Judd Gregg, N.H., to run the commerce Department. In the space of a week, Gregg accepted the cabinet position and then resigned, citing fundamental disagreements with the president’s policies and making Obama 0-for-2 in his attempts to fill the Commerce job. One has to wonder if California’s success at gerrymandering inspired Emanuel’s attempt to craft a permanent one-party rule throughout the entire country using essentially the same tool.
THE DISHONESTY OF SOCIALIST ONE PARTY-RULE
California author, philosopher and radio host Rabbi Daniel Lapin is a member of the college speaker’s circuit and a man who tries to undo some of socialist indoctrination that passes as education on college campuses here. One of his more provocative talks is titled “Why Socialism Is Evil.” He explains to California college students that capitalism’s stated goal is freedom while socialism’s stated goal is equality and that, in the end, capitalism does deliver freedom, yet socialism never delivers equality. Instead, socialist regimes pick winners and losers and can do so only through the threat of lethal force. Socialism is, therefore, inherently dishonest. It must constantly obfuscate the fact that its winners are the regime’s faithful supporters and its favored aggrieved groups. Its winners are those picked to be the officers of the vast governmental agencies socialism creates and expands. Its winners’ children are given preferential entrance to elite universities. Its families gain access to special health care programs, unavailable to the masses, once the health care industry is nationalized. Socialism’s losers are those who are expected to fund the source of their own servitude.
While the average college student may not get it, the average California taxpayer cannot overlook his own growing servility to the state and the obvious false promises inherent in one-party socialist rule. Plus, one can clearly see this exact perfidy is on display now in our nation’s capital where one-party socialist rule is just 100 days old. In Charles Krauthammer’s much quoted column, “The Great Non Sequitur,” he exposes Obama’s dishonesty by showing that the president’s massive spending agenda is one gigantic con, one of the largest bait-and-switch operations in human history.
After listing the causes of our current fiscal calamity, “a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the banking industry … Fannie and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington into improvident loans, corrupted bond-rating agencies … the easy money policies of Alan Greenspan’s Fed … greedy house flippers, deceitful home buyers,” Krauthammer points out that our new president claims that he will “redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap and trade tax on energy, and a major federalization of education.” He concludes, “Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core.”
The near collapse of the financial system has nothing to do with the absence of universal health care. But the crisis does create for Obama, the “psychological conditions—the sense of crisis bordering on fear itself—for enacting his ‘Big Bang’ agenda to federalize and or socialize health care, education, and energy.”
One of many galling aspects of Obama’s con is that, in just three months, he has proposed spending that will add more to the U.S. deficit than all the previous presidents combined, from George Washington through George W. Bush, a level of debt that a growing number of economists term “generational theft” and believe is not sustainable and cannot be repaid. Yet he still hasn’t presented the nation a coherent plan to stabilize the banking crisis.
Former Obama advisor Warren Buffet terms the current crisis an “economic Pearl Harbor” and has parted ways with the administration over its desire to enact a far-left agenda rather than focus on finding solid free-market solutions. And if the White House follows its plan to exploit a serious crisis, it is one that may well live in infamy.
MUCH OF OBAMA’S AGENDA IS ALREADY IN PLACE IN CALIFORNIA
On Oct. 17, 2008, the Wall Street Journal published an enormously prophetic lead editorial titled “A Liberal Supermajority.” With the election still three weeks away, the piece presciently predicted the various programs that Obama would attempt to implement, if elected, in order to create vast numbers of new Democratic voters and thereby permanent Democratic rule over the nation. He would do this in much the same way that President Franklin Roosevelt did as a result of the Great Depression.
Obama feigns adoration of Lincoln when he is actually following the lead of FDR and is the product of modern Democratic machines that run big cities (such as Chicago) and whole states (such as California). Many of the programs Obama campaigned on are already in place in California. For example:
Union Supremacy: The new administration has let its union supporters know that, due to their longsuffering support for the Democratic Party, they will be rewarded with the passage of the Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act. In actuality, if passed, it will unleash union thugs on small and large businesses all across the country, abolishing the secret ballot and driving up union membership.
In California the state employee unions are already the most powerful force behind the one-party rule.
Green Power: Obama wants to pass massive carbon-emissions taxes on businesses, which will supposedly provide billions of dollars in new government revenue in order to fund new programs such as universal health care. Additionally, he wants to create a new federal agency (likely staffed with Democratic supporters) whose preposterous mission is perfect in that it can never succeed and therefore never end: the mission to stop climate change.
Tom McClintock, the newly elected Republican U.S. congressman and one of the few California elected officials with impeccable conservative credentials, spoke to me about Schwarzenegger’s emissions law already on the books, passed in 2006 by California voters. McClintock described, in apocalyptic terms reminiscent of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” the implications of the measure: “AB 32 is the most radical reduction of carbon emissions anywhere on the planet. It calls for a 25 percent reduction of carbon dioxide by 2020, a mandate that can’t be met even if we removed every car on the road in California. It will mean systematically shutting down entire sectors of California’s economy with grave implications for agriculture, cargo, cement production, construction, manufacturing, energy production, distilling, baking. It is now being implemented by the Air Resources Board, which is taking actions necessary to shut down commercial enterprises in California.”
Election Corruption: Following California’s gerrymandered lead, the White House has not only signaled that it would like to make the Census an administration-owned program but also doubled down by adding to the stimulus bill $1 billion in old-fashioned slush funds for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG). The program gives local politicians wide latitude when spending these monies. ACORN, which has been cited in a dozen states for creating bogus Democratic voter registrations, loves CDBG because it is adept at lobbying for CDBG funds. The Wall Street Journal and others have predicted that, with this access topublic funds, ACORN can open offices for upcoming elections with teams of workers who can register fictitious Democratic voters on a nationwide scale.
Marxist-Inspired Taxation: The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board asserted that the election of Obama hopefully signals the beginning of a new era when the U.S. government can finally address the “problem” of “income inequality,” when the tax code can finally be used to establish “fairness” among its subjects. But Art Laffer and Stephen Moore in their recent book, “The End of Prosperity,” demonstrate that the bottom 20 percent of wage earners saw their incomes grow by 109 percent over the decade from 1996 to 2005, while the top 1 percent, which shoulders 40 percent of all federal income taxes, saw their incomes fall 23 percent. Also, as McClintock points out, the new taxes levied against Californians will not produce the higher revenues projected by the governor and legislature but will, instead, assuredly drive more of the overtaxed populace out of the state. The Chronicle embodies the collectivist worldview that passes for wisdom among the majority of California’s ruling elite and citizenry.
And Obama has betrayed his Marxist worldview on numerous occasions such as the time he told “Joe the Plumber” that he just “needed to spread the wealth around.” But never was his socialism more thoroughly exposed during the campaign than during the Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia. ABC’s Charlie Gibson asked him why he wanted to increase the capital gains tax when both Presidents Clinton and Bush lowered it and both times “revenue from the tax increased.”
“Well, Charlie,” Obama replied, “what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for the purposes of fairness.” He then went on with a preposterous fabrication about how the government needed to punish the top 50 hedge-fund managers for making $29 billion dollars last year. This should have been a stunning revelation for clear-thinking Democrats. Here was their candidate for president admitting that he did not mind if his tax policy damages the country and lowers revenue to the Treasury as long as it can be used for a higher purpose—a tool to conduct class warfare.
THERE’S HOPE FOR A SECOND GREAT CALIFORNIA TAX REVOLT
It should be noted that, in 1978, California, ever the trendsetter, was the first state to successfully stage a tax revolt through ballot initiatives. Laffer and Moore describe the 1978 initiative (Prop. 13) as the most significant tax revolt since the Boston Tea Party and one that set the stage for Reagan’s supply-side revolution two years later. They point out that, in California 30 years ago, there was also a housing crisis due to thousands of Californians, many of them elderly citizens living on fixed incomes, who were losing their homes because they could not pay the escalating property taxes that were assessed at a 3.5 percent rate.
The 1978 initiative slashed the tax to 1 percent and mandated that any tax increases had to be passed by a supermajority of two-thirds in both houses. Big business, labor, the media, academia and virtually every other special interest group came out against the measure, predicting doom if it passed. The Los Angeles Times called Prop. 13’s sponsors, Paul Gann and Howard Jarvis, “the chief agitators for this expanding group of disgruntled taxpayers.” The UCLA business school predicted a loss of 450,000 jobs in the state. The measure passed by 20 points.
Laffer and Moore show that, to this day, all the Prop. 13 opponents were wrong and continue to lie about its aftermath. While the measure brought the tax burden down from $124.57 per $1,000 of income to $95 per $1,000 over the next 10 years, housing prices soared, 3 million new jobs were created and tax revenues to the state more than doubled. So much for the liberal mantra that holds that tax cuts benefit only the rich. Yet today, one of the provisions the state’s Republican governor is now seeking in California’s special election this month is the ability to rescind the two-thirds supermajority provision so that the state can more easily raise taxes and pass bloated budgets.
However, there is hope in numbers. Approximately 40 percent of the 37 million Californians are right-of-center voters, and there are signs that this vast army is motivated, mad, eager to be called to muster and ready for the next tax revolt to begin. Among this nascent revolution’s emerging generals is Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA.org). His think tank, founded in 1978 by Prop. 13’s co-sponsor, has thousands of members and supporters who provide Coupal with the means to run his current hard-hitting media campaign against Schwarzenegger’s Prop. 1A that will allow the state to extend the new tax deal into the future. Due to his lack of guiding principles, the governor’s special election agenda this time is being attacked by his former base—the conservatives.
As California’s May special election impends, the other force driving the revolt is conservative talk radio, which in California dominates in audience share versus their competitors who offer left-of-center, “mainstream” news talk or music. On the powerful L.A. station KFI, the hosts of the prime drive-time show, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, in March, organized a taxpayer rally (a neo-tea party like those that have sprung up all over the country.) On air, during the days preceding the event, the hosts wondered aloud if Californians had “become sheep” accepting oppressive government and would therefore not show up at the Slide bare Café in Fullerton for the rally. The event brought out 8,000 people who let the media there know that they were mad as hell.
For many in California, both talk radio and the initiative process give us a way of circumventing one-party rule, a way of connecting to the pure democracy invented by our Greek ancestors of the fifth century B.C. They connect us to our heritage where the men of the Athenian Assembly were provided the opportunity to speak to every other Athenian citizen soldier and the right to cast a vote on vital matters concerning war and peace. Because we still have access to the initiative process and the radio waves, there is still hope that we can reverse our slide into servitude.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Washington Post Op-ed: The 'Cap And Tax' Dead End
By Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK)
There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America's unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won't bring jobs. Our nation's debt is unsustainable, and the federal government's reach into the private sector is unprecedented.
Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.
There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.
Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.
In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.
The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.
The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will "necessarily skyrocket." So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.
Even Warren Buffett, an ardent Obama supporter, admitted that under the cap-and-tax scheme, "poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity."
We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.
In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.
Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.
We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter.
For so many reasons, we can't afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.
Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?
Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama's energy cap-and-tax plan.
There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America's unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won't bring jobs. Our nation's debt is unsustainable, and the federal government's reach into the private sector is unprecedented.
Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day than on the gravity of these challenges. So, at risk of disappointing the chattering class, let me make clear what is foremost on my mind and where my focus will be:
I am deeply concerned about President Obama's cap-and-trade energy plan, and I believe it is an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage.
American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security. Consequently, many of us in this huge, energy-rich state recognize that the president's cap-and-trade energy tax would adversely affect every aspect of the U.S. economy.
There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.
Job losses are so certain under this new cap-and-tax plan that it includes a provision accommodating newly unemployed workers from the resulting dried-up energy sector, to the tune of $4.2 billion over eight years. So much for creating jobs.
In addition to immediately increasing unemployment in the energy sector, even more American jobs will be threatened by the rising cost of doing business under the cap-and-tax plan. For example, the cost of farming will certainly increase, driving down farm incomes while driving up grocery prices. The costs of manufacturing, warehousing and transportation will also increase.
The ironic beauty in this plan? Soon, even the most ardent liberal will understand supply-side economics.
The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will "necessarily skyrocket." So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.
Even Warren Buffett, an ardent Obama supporter, admitted that under the cap-and-tax scheme, "poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity."
We must move in a new direction. We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today.
In Alaska, we are progressing on the largest private-sector energy project in history. Our 3,000-mile natural gas pipeline will transport hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of our clean natural gas to hungry markets across America. We can safely drill for U.S. oil offshore and in a tiny, 2,000-acre corner of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge if ever given the go-ahead by Washington bureaucrats.
Of course, Alaska is not the sole source of American energy. Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. Westerners literally sit on mountains of oil and gas, and every state can consider the possibility of nuclear energy.
We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter.
For so many reasons, we can't afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.
Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation?
Yes, we can. Just not with Barack Obama's energy cap-and-tax plan.
Locking Up Our Energy Resources
Posted by: Michele Bachmann at 9:20 AM
As Americans hit the road for their family vacations this summer, they're undoubtedly noticing the money they leave at the gas pump. AAA's Fuel Gauge Report has the national average at $2.58 for regular gas. That's a far cry from the $4.11 we were paying a year ago. But, the need for an all-of-the-above strategy for energy independence remains just as great now as it did then.
So, it's puzzling that the Obama Administration is trying to restrict our ability to tap into American oil and natural gas resources.
Robert Bryce, Managing Editor for Energy Tribune, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on July 7, 2009 that President Obama is calling for the elimination of two tax incentives that encourage oil and natural gas exploration. President Obama calls them "unjustifiable loopholes" for big, bad oil and gas. The facts show that these two tax provisions more than pay their way all the while opening up American supplies that make us more energy independent.
One allows for the expensing of "intangible drilling costs," which are things like wages, fuel, and pipe. The other provides an allowance for percentage depletion, so well owners can deduct a portion of the value of the production of their wells. Together, these two provisions make up the bulk of the total $1.92 billion in federal oil and gas subsidies. An investment banking firm, Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., analyzed the impact of eliminating the intangible drilling cost tax incentive and found that it alone could lead to an increase in the cost of U.S. natural gas by 50 cents per thousand cubic feet.
But, together, these tax provisions helped us to make advances in energy technology and to tap into natural gas reserves in Texas and Pennsylvania that were previously thought to be too expensive to reach. A report by the Department of Energy this April found that these newly available resources total 649 trillion cubic feet of gas. That is the equivalent of 118.3 billion barrels of oil, which is more than the proven oil reserves of Iraq.
As Bryce points out, "Simple arithmetic shows that eliminating the drilling subsidies that cost taxpayers less than $2 billion per year could result in an increased cost to consumers of $11.5 billion per year in the form of higher natural gas prices."
When you're gassing up the car for your next family outing, think about what it will take to make energy more affordable and energy independence more attainable. It's got to be an all-of-the-above strategy.
As Americans hit the road for their family vacations this summer, they're undoubtedly noticing the money they leave at the gas pump. AAA's Fuel Gauge Report has the national average at $2.58 for regular gas. That's a far cry from the $4.11 we were paying a year ago. But, the need for an all-of-the-above strategy for energy independence remains just as great now as it did then.
So, it's puzzling that the Obama Administration is trying to restrict our ability to tap into American oil and natural gas resources.
Robert Bryce, Managing Editor for Energy Tribune, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on July 7, 2009 that President Obama is calling for the elimination of two tax incentives that encourage oil and natural gas exploration. President Obama calls them "unjustifiable loopholes" for big, bad oil and gas. The facts show that these two tax provisions more than pay their way all the while opening up American supplies that make us more energy independent.
One allows for the expensing of "intangible drilling costs," which are things like wages, fuel, and pipe. The other provides an allowance for percentage depletion, so well owners can deduct a portion of the value of the production of their wells. Together, these two provisions make up the bulk of the total $1.92 billion in federal oil and gas subsidies. An investment banking firm, Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., analyzed the impact of eliminating the intangible drilling cost tax incentive and found that it alone could lead to an increase in the cost of U.S. natural gas by 50 cents per thousand cubic feet.
But, together, these tax provisions helped us to make advances in energy technology and to tap into natural gas reserves in Texas and Pennsylvania that were previously thought to be too expensive to reach. A report by the Department of Energy this April found that these newly available resources total 649 trillion cubic feet of gas. That is the equivalent of 118.3 billion barrels of oil, which is more than the proven oil reserves of Iraq.
As Bryce points out, "Simple arithmetic shows that eliminating the drilling subsidies that cost taxpayers less than $2 billion per year could result in an increased cost to consumers of $11.5 billion per year in the form of higher natural gas prices."
When you're gassing up the car for your next family outing, think about what it will take to make energy more affordable and energy independence more attainable. It's got to be an all-of-the-above strategy.
Some People Have a Strange Definition of 'Stimulus'
Posted by Bobby Eberle
July 13, 2009 at 7:07 am
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When someone's heart rhythm is out of whack, what do medical personnel do to get it back on the beat? Do they massage it for twenty to thirty minutes? Do they talk to it, trying to coax it back to beat normally? No. They zap it. In other words, they provide it with a "stimulus" that is designed for one purpose: get the heart beating properly... now!
This concept seems to be foreign to Barack Obama and the Democrats. During the last recession when the country was gripped with not only an economic downturn but a massive terrorist attack, President Bush moved to cut taxes and inject money back into the system... money spent by the taxpayers in the manner they saw fit. It worked. Now, we have nearly a trillion dollars in big-government spending, and it's not doing the job. What do Obama and the Democrats think about it? They think another "stimulus" might be in order. Are they crazy???
In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Obama wrote about the need for patience as he and the Democrats work to "fix" the economy.
Of course, he starts the column by noting, "Nearly six months ago, my administration took office amid the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression." It seems to be that this is the worst economic situation since the last time we had a Democrat in office who didn't know what he was doing (Jimmy Carter).
The swift and aggressive action we took in those first few months has helped pull our financial system and our economy back from the brink. We took steps to restart lending to families and businesses, stabilize our major financial institutions, and help homeowners stay in their homes and pay their mortgages. We also passed the most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation's history.
Where to begin? First, Obama said that because of his nearly trillion dollar spending plan, unemployment would not top 8 percent. Now, it is nearly 10 percent. People keep losing jobs. In addition, a true stimulus is made to get things going NOW. The vast majority of the funds approved by Congress have not even been spent, and when they are, it will be toward a laundry list of liberal programs designed to take money from productive Americans and give it to others.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was not expected to restore the economy to full health on its own but to provide the boost necessary to stop the free fall. So far, it has done that. It was, from the start, a two-year program, and it will steadily save and create jobs as it ramps up over this summer and fall. We must let it work the way it's supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity.
Question... Had the federal government done nothing, where would the country be now? Next question... What if the federal government passed a bill the size of the stimulus but directed toward cutting taxes? What do you think that would do to hiring and to spending by the American people? Isn't that what a stimulus is all about?
I am confident that the United States of America will weather this economic storm. But once we clear away the wreckage, the real question is what we will build in its place. Even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, I have insisted that we must rebuild it better than before. For if we do not seize this moment to confront the weaknesses that have plagued our economy for decades, we will consign ourselves and our children to future crises, sluggish growth, or both.
Rebuild it better than before? Let's see... right now, in order to pay for the government-run health care plan that Obama is proposing, the Democrats want to raise taxes even higher. First, they will let the Bush tax cuts expire. This will not only push the top rate from 35% to nearly 40%, but it will push other rates higher as well. Then, the Democrats want to put a surtax on top of the tax rate. This will effectively put the top rate somewhere around 43-45%. Thus, the people that America counts on to expand business and hire people will be paying almost half of their income in taxes to the federal government. How is that supposed to help in hiring?
Obama talks about the "jobs of the future." Clearly those must all be government jobs, because the private sector will be taxed into oblivion in order to pay the increasing costs of government. Americans deserve to keep what they make and spend it how they see fit. The more that is spent by the private sector means that more goods will need to be produced and more services will be rendered. This means manufacturing. This means jobs.
July 13, 2009 at 7:07 am
>> Printer-Friendly Version
When someone's heart rhythm is out of whack, what do medical personnel do to get it back on the beat? Do they massage it for twenty to thirty minutes? Do they talk to it, trying to coax it back to beat normally? No. They zap it. In other words, they provide it with a "stimulus" that is designed for one purpose: get the heart beating properly... now!
This concept seems to be foreign to Barack Obama and the Democrats. During the last recession when the country was gripped with not only an economic downturn but a massive terrorist attack, President Bush moved to cut taxes and inject money back into the system... money spent by the taxpayers in the manner they saw fit. It worked. Now, we have nearly a trillion dollars in big-government spending, and it's not doing the job. What do Obama and the Democrats think about it? They think another "stimulus" might be in order. Are they crazy???
In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Obama wrote about the need for patience as he and the Democrats work to "fix" the economy.
Of course, he starts the column by noting, "Nearly six months ago, my administration took office amid the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression." It seems to be that this is the worst economic situation since the last time we had a Democrat in office who didn't know what he was doing (Jimmy Carter).
The swift and aggressive action we took in those first few months has helped pull our financial system and our economy back from the brink. We took steps to restart lending to families and businesses, stabilize our major financial institutions, and help homeowners stay in their homes and pay their mortgages. We also passed the most sweeping economic recovery plan in our nation's history.
Where to begin? First, Obama said that because of his nearly trillion dollar spending plan, unemployment would not top 8 percent. Now, it is nearly 10 percent. People keep losing jobs. In addition, a true stimulus is made to get things going NOW. The vast majority of the funds approved by Congress have not even been spent, and when they are, it will be toward a laundry list of liberal programs designed to take money from productive Americans and give it to others.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was not expected to restore the economy to full health on its own but to provide the boost necessary to stop the free fall. So far, it has done that. It was, from the start, a two-year program, and it will steadily save and create jobs as it ramps up over this summer and fall. We must let it work the way it's supposed to, with the understanding that in any recession, unemployment tends to recover more slowly than other measures of economic activity.
Question... Had the federal government done nothing, where would the country be now? Next question... What if the federal government passed a bill the size of the stimulus but directed toward cutting taxes? What do you think that would do to hiring and to spending by the American people? Isn't that what a stimulus is all about?
I am confident that the United States of America will weather this economic storm. But once we clear away the wreckage, the real question is what we will build in its place. Even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, I have insisted that we must rebuild it better than before. For if we do not seize this moment to confront the weaknesses that have plagued our economy for decades, we will consign ourselves and our children to future crises, sluggish growth, or both.
Rebuild it better than before? Let's see... right now, in order to pay for the government-run health care plan that Obama is proposing, the Democrats want to raise taxes even higher. First, they will let the Bush tax cuts expire. This will not only push the top rate from 35% to nearly 40%, but it will push other rates higher as well. Then, the Democrats want to put a surtax on top of the tax rate. This will effectively put the top rate somewhere around 43-45%. Thus, the people that America counts on to expand business and hire people will be paying almost half of their income in taxes to the federal government. How is that supposed to help in hiring?
Obama talks about the "jobs of the future." Clearly those must all be government jobs, because the private sector will be taxed into oblivion in order to pay the increasing costs of government. Americans deserve to keep what they make and spend it how they see fit. The more that is spent by the private sector means that more goods will need to be produced and more services will be rendered. This means manufacturing. This means jobs.
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Energy Prices to Surge
Friday, July 10, 2009 8:22 AM
By: Gene J. Koprows Article Font Size
The Obama administration's plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil and natural gas exploration will drive up costs for consumers, Robert Bryce, the managing editor of Energy Tribune, wrote.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Bryce said that President Barack Obama's 2010 budget calls for closing two tax breaks: The expensing of intangible drilling costs, such as wages, fuel and pipe, which enables energy companies to deduct the bulk of their expenses for drilling new wells; and the allowance for percentage depletion, which allows well owners to deduct a portion of the value of the production from their wells.
"Obama called the tax breaks for the oil and gas industry 'unjustifiable loopholes' that do 'little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices,'" Bryce, the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence, wrote. "That's flat not true. The deduction for intangible drilling costs encourages energy companies to plow huge amounts of capital into more drilling. And that drilling has resulted in unprecedented increases in natural gas production and potential."
Bryce wrote that a Department of Energy report, released in April, said the newly available shale resources total 649 trillion cubic feet of gas. "That's the energy equivalent of 118.3 billion barrels of oil, or slightly more than the proven oil reserves of Iraq," he wrote.
Eliminating tax breaks for drilling will make natural gas more expensive, Bryce wrote. This is confirmed by a major investment bank, Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., of Houston, which estimated that eliminating the intangible drilling cost provision could increase U.S. natural gas prices by 50 cents per thousand cubic feet.
"Why? Because without the tax break, fewer wells will be drilled and less gas will be produced," Bryce wrote. "The U.S. consumes about 23 trillion cubic feet of gas per year. Simple arithmetic shows that eliminating the drilling subsidies that cost taxpayers less than $2 billion per year could result in an increased cost to consumers of $11.5 billion per year in the form of higher natural gas prices."
President Obama is pushing for greater subsidies for ethanol, an alternative fuel that comes from corn. Obama has been pro-ethanol and anti-oil for years, Bryce wrote.
"But he and his allies on Capitol Hill should understand that removing drilling incentives will mean less drilling, which will mean less domestic production and more imports of both oil and natural gas," Bryce wrote. "That's hardly a recipe for energy independence."
According to a report on CNN Money, energy prices already are already to climb. For example, Duke Energy Corp. secured approval Wednesday to increase electricity prices this month at its Ohio utility.
By: Gene J. Koprows Article Font Size
The Obama administration's plan to eliminate tax breaks for oil and natural gas exploration will drive up costs for consumers, Robert Bryce, the managing editor of Energy Tribune, wrote.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Bryce said that President Barack Obama's 2010 budget calls for closing two tax breaks: The expensing of intangible drilling costs, such as wages, fuel and pipe, which enables energy companies to deduct the bulk of their expenses for drilling new wells; and the allowance for percentage depletion, which allows well owners to deduct a portion of the value of the production from their wells.
"Obama called the tax breaks for the oil and gas industry 'unjustifiable loopholes' that do 'little to incentivize production or reduce energy prices,'" Bryce, the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence, wrote. "That's flat not true. The deduction for intangible drilling costs encourages energy companies to plow huge amounts of capital into more drilling. And that drilling has resulted in unprecedented increases in natural gas production and potential."
Bryce wrote that a Department of Energy report, released in April, said the newly available shale resources total 649 trillion cubic feet of gas. "That's the energy equivalent of 118.3 billion barrels of oil, or slightly more than the proven oil reserves of Iraq," he wrote.
Eliminating tax breaks for drilling will make natural gas more expensive, Bryce wrote. This is confirmed by a major investment bank, Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., of Houston, which estimated that eliminating the intangible drilling cost provision could increase U.S. natural gas prices by 50 cents per thousand cubic feet.
"Why? Because without the tax break, fewer wells will be drilled and less gas will be produced," Bryce wrote. "The U.S. consumes about 23 trillion cubic feet of gas per year. Simple arithmetic shows that eliminating the drilling subsidies that cost taxpayers less than $2 billion per year could result in an increased cost to consumers of $11.5 billion per year in the form of higher natural gas prices."
President Obama is pushing for greater subsidies for ethanol, an alternative fuel that comes from corn. Obama has been pro-ethanol and anti-oil for years, Bryce wrote.
"But he and his allies on Capitol Hill should understand that removing drilling incentives will mean less drilling, which will mean less domestic production and more imports of both oil and natural gas," Bryce wrote. "That's hardly a recipe for energy independence."
According to a report on CNN Money, energy prices already are already to climb. For example, Duke Energy Corp. secured approval Wednesday to increase electricity prices this month at its Ohio utility.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Cap-and-tax: Government vs. America
David Limbaugh
Posted: July 10, 2009
1:00 am Eastern
© 2009
There is still time to stop the legislative monstrosity known as the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill before the Senate approves it. But for that to happen, Americans must learn how bad it is.
Let's briefly review the basics: the bill is ostensibly designed to curb man-caused carbon emissions (presumably without outlawing breathing) to retard global warming.
Even if we accept, for purposes of argument, the assumptions of radical, hysterical leftist environmentalists that man-caused global warming will destroy the planet if evil, rich capitalists don't radically curtail their own contributions to the catastrophe, Waxman-Markey would not prevent this Armageddon.
Climate scientist Chip Knappenberger, of New Hope Environmental Services, calculates that the bill would only reduce Earth's temperature by 0.1 to 0.2 degree Celsius by 2100. The Heritage Foundation's Ben Lieberman says he's found no "decent refutation of the assertion that the temperature impact would be inconsequential."
Unfortunately, the bill's negative impact on the economy would not be inconsequential. Lieberman says the bill would cause estimated job losses averaging about 1.15 million from 2012-2030, and the cumulative projected loss in gross domestic product would be almost $10 trillion by 2035. The national debt from this bill alone, disregarding the multiple bailouts, stimulus packages and health care "reform," would increase by 2035 for a family of four by 26 percent, or $115,000.
Heritage is not alone in making these claims. The far more liberal Brookings Institution estimates the bill would cost 1.8 percent of GDP in 2035 and 2.5 percent by 2050. Heritage's "Foundry" blog concludes, "Economists from liberal think tanks, conservative think tanks, and industry associations agree that Waxman-Markey will reduce income by hundreds of billions of dollars per year."
These facts are enough to make you question why people aren't threatening a sit-in in the Senate until this recklessness stops. But there are other things about the bill you should know – just in case you have an unusually high outrage tolerance:
* As noted, the bill contains a hidden provision establishing unemployment benefits for up to three full years for workers displaced as a result of this "job creations" bill, as well as health insurance premium subsidies and $1,500 each for job search and relocation expenses – all at taxpayers' expense.
* The American Issues Project has exposed Section 204 of the bill, called the "Building Energy Performance Labeling Program," which gives the federal government unprecedented authority over your home. AIP says the section mandates that new homes
be 30 percent more energy-efficient than the current building code on the very day the law is signed. The requirement increases to 50 percent by 2014 and continues to increase until 2030.
* The program would also affect existing properties you already own. It requires states to label residential and nonresidential buildings based on their efficiency ratings and to publicize this information. This will lead to "a number of circumstances under which the states could inspect a building," such as if you want to renovate your house in a way that requires a building permit, sell your house, or change the name of the person responsible for paying its utilities. The federal commissars, in their infinite compassion with other people's money, have also set aside a fund to help homeowners retrofit their properties. Of course, there's a formula, to be administered by the bureaucratocracy. The more radically you purify your property the more "awards" you receive – up to $12,200. Be aware, though, that further fine print requires the property owner to pay at least half of these retrofitting costs, no matter how much their "awards" from the government. I suppose this is the Marxists' nod to self-reliance and fiscal responsibility.
* The bill is so egregiously obscene that even the strong Democratic majority in the House couldn't have passed it without bribing some recalcitrant representatives – also with our money. To buy, er, secure Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur's vote, they offered a new federal power authority, which, according to The Washington Times, is "stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states." Just swell.
* In addition to all the economic destruction the bill would cause, in the end, it is not so much about global warming as Obaman wealth redistribution. "The Foundry" says Obama's own budget "promises to raise $650 billion in revenues by selling carbon permits (which are the exact same thing as an energy tax)," only $150 billion of which will go to alternative energy production. The rest will be redistributed to people who "don't pay income taxes."
The Founding Fathers and our fathers are rolling over in their graves as this great country voluntarily abandons its dreams of equal opportunity, achievement and prosperity and sows the seeds of its own destruction.
Posted: July 10, 2009
1:00 am Eastern
© 2009
There is still time to stop the legislative monstrosity known as the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill before the Senate approves it. But for that to happen, Americans must learn how bad it is.
Let's briefly review the basics: the bill is ostensibly designed to curb man-caused carbon emissions (presumably without outlawing breathing) to retard global warming.
Even if we accept, for purposes of argument, the assumptions of radical, hysterical leftist environmentalists that man-caused global warming will destroy the planet if evil, rich capitalists don't radically curtail their own contributions to the catastrophe, Waxman-Markey would not prevent this Armageddon.
Climate scientist Chip Knappenberger, of New Hope Environmental Services, calculates that the bill would only reduce Earth's temperature by 0.1 to 0.2 degree Celsius by 2100. The Heritage Foundation's Ben Lieberman says he's found no "decent refutation of the assertion that the temperature impact would be inconsequential."
Unfortunately, the bill's negative impact on the economy would not be inconsequential. Lieberman says the bill would cause estimated job losses averaging about 1.15 million from 2012-2030, and the cumulative projected loss in gross domestic product would be almost $10 trillion by 2035. The national debt from this bill alone, disregarding the multiple bailouts, stimulus packages and health care "reform," would increase by 2035 for a family of four by 26 percent, or $115,000.
Heritage is not alone in making these claims. The far more liberal Brookings Institution estimates the bill would cost 1.8 percent of GDP in 2035 and 2.5 percent by 2050. Heritage's "Foundry" blog concludes, "Economists from liberal think tanks, conservative think tanks, and industry associations agree that Waxman-Markey will reduce income by hundreds of billions of dollars per year."
These facts are enough to make you question why people aren't threatening a sit-in in the Senate until this recklessness stops. But there are other things about the bill you should know – just in case you have an unusually high outrage tolerance:
* As noted, the bill contains a hidden provision establishing unemployment benefits for up to three full years for workers displaced as a result of this "job creations" bill, as well as health insurance premium subsidies and $1,500 each for job search and relocation expenses – all at taxpayers' expense.
* The American Issues Project has exposed Section 204 of the bill, called the "Building Energy Performance Labeling Program," which gives the federal government unprecedented authority over your home. AIP says the section mandates that new homes
be 30 percent more energy-efficient than the current building code on the very day the law is signed. The requirement increases to 50 percent by 2014 and continues to increase until 2030.
* The program would also affect existing properties you already own. It requires states to label residential and nonresidential buildings based on their efficiency ratings and to publicize this information. This will lead to "a number of circumstances under which the states could inspect a building," such as if you want to renovate your house in a way that requires a building permit, sell your house, or change the name of the person responsible for paying its utilities. The federal commissars, in their infinite compassion with other people's money, have also set aside a fund to help homeowners retrofit their properties. Of course, there's a formula, to be administered by the bureaucratocracy. The more radically you purify your property the more "awards" you receive – up to $12,200. Be aware, though, that further fine print requires the property owner to pay at least half of these retrofitting costs, no matter how much their "awards" from the government. I suppose this is the Marxists' nod to self-reliance and fiscal responsibility.
* The bill is so egregiously obscene that even the strong Democratic majority in the House couldn't have passed it without bribing some recalcitrant representatives – also with our money. To buy, er, secure Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur's vote, they offered a new federal power authority, which, according to The Washington Times, is "stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states." Just swell.
* In addition to all the economic destruction the bill would cause, in the end, it is not so much about global warming as Obaman wealth redistribution. "The Foundry" says Obama's own budget "promises to raise $650 billion in revenues by selling carbon permits (which are the exact same thing as an energy tax)," only $150 billion of which will go to alternative energy production. The rest will be redistributed to people who "don't pay income taxes."
The Founding Fathers and our fathers are rolling over in their graves as this great country voluntarily abandons its dreams of equal opportunity, achievement and prosperity and sows the seeds of its own destruction.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
The Excuses Begin Jennifer Rubin - 07.09.2009 - 1:41 PM
Democrats are in a bit of a jam on the stimulus, as many reporters have noticed: “Democrats are all over the map on the stimulus and the possibility of a sequel, and it’s not hard to see why: When it comes to a second stimulus, they may be damned if they do and damned if they don’t.” But there is nothing they would have done differently, right? That phrase may prove to be this administration’s “Mission Accomplished” banner.
The current excuse — that somehow the administration didn’t understand how severe the crisis was — isn’t going over so well. In fact, it’s so easily disproved by rolling back the tapes of all the gloom-and-doom talk that permeated the president’s remarks in the early days of his term, that his critics are having a field day. House Minority Leader John Boehner, for example, isn’t buying any excuses:
I found it … interesting over the last couple of days to hear Vice President Biden and the president mention the fact that they didn’t realize how difficult an economic circumstance we were in. . . Now this is the greatest fabrication I have seen since I’ve been in Congress. I’ve sat in meetings in the White House with the vice president and the president. There’s not one person that sat in those rooms that didn’t understand how serious our economic crisis was.
Well he does have a point; the president kept calling it the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The simple truth is the stimulus was ill-conceived and poorly executed. Sooner or later, the president and his advisers will need to acknowledge that deferring to Nancy Pelosi to devise a grab-bag of goodies for liberal interest groups wasn’t smart politics or smart policy.
The current excuse — that somehow the administration didn’t understand how severe the crisis was — isn’t going over so well. In fact, it’s so easily disproved by rolling back the tapes of all the gloom-and-doom talk that permeated the president’s remarks in the early days of his term, that his critics are having a field day. House Minority Leader John Boehner, for example, isn’t buying any excuses:
I found it … interesting over the last couple of days to hear Vice President Biden and the president mention the fact that they didn’t realize how difficult an economic circumstance we were in. . . Now this is the greatest fabrication I have seen since I’ve been in Congress. I’ve sat in meetings in the White House with the vice president and the president. There’s not one person that sat in those rooms that didn’t understand how serious our economic crisis was.
Well he does have a point; the president kept calling it the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
The simple truth is the stimulus was ill-conceived and poorly executed. Sooner or later, the president and his advisers will need to acknowledge that deferring to Nancy Pelosi to devise a grab-bag of goodies for liberal interest groups wasn’t smart politics or smart policy.
In health bill, billions for parks, paths
WASHINGTON - Sweeping healthcare legislation working its way through Congress is more than an effort to provide insurance to millions of Americans without coverage. Tucked within is a provision that could provide billions of dollars for walking paths, streetlights, jungle gyms, and even farmers’ markets.
The add-ons - characterized as part of a broad effort to improve the nation’s health “infrastructure’’ - appear in House and Senate versions of the bill.
Critics argue the provision is a thinly disguised effort to insert pork-barrel spending into a bill that has been widely portrayed to the public as dealing with expanding health coverage and cutting medical costs. A leading critic, Senator Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, ridicules the local projects, asking: “How can Democrats justify the wasteful spending in this bill?’’
But advocates, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, defend the proposed spending as a necessary way to promote healthier lives and, in the long run, cut medical costs. “These are not public works grants; they are community transformation grants,’’ said Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Kennedy, chairman of the Senate health committee whose healthcare bill includes the projects.
“If improving the lighting in a playground or clearing a walking path or a bike path or restoring a park are determined as needed by a community to create more opportunities for physical activity, we should not prohibit this from happening,’’ Coley said in a statement.
The Senate health panel’s bill does not specify how much would go to the community projects. A Senate staff member said the amount of spending will be left up to the Obama administration. A House version of the bill caps the projects at $1.6 billion per year and includes them in a section designed to save money in the long run by reducing obesity and other health problems.
It is not clear yet how the money would be allocated. The legislation says that grants will be awarded to local and state government agencies that will have to submit detailed proposals. The final decisions will be made by the secretary of Health and Human Services.
The proposal was inserted at the urging of a nonprofit, nonpartisan group called Trust for America’s Health, which produces reports about obesity and other health matters. Part of the group’s proposed language for the community grants was inserted into the Senate bill. It called for “creating the infrastructure to support active living and access to nutritious foods in a safe environment.’’ The group provided examples of grants for bike paths, jungle gyms, and lighting, though the Senate bill doesn’t list those specifics.
Jeffrey Levi, the group’s executive director, said that “it is easy to satirize’’ the projects, but they are needed to improve America’s health.
We will see a return on this investment if you use this money strategically for proven, evidence-based programs,’’ Levi said in an interview, citing efforts to stop smoking and to promote physical activity. “We will prevent or reverse chronic diseases such as heart disease. . . . It will pay for itself.’’
While many may think the healthcare bill strictly aims to increase coverage, Levi said that is a mistaken impression. “This isn’t just about health insurance,’’ he said. “This bill is about creating a healthier country.’’
The group says that a modest community project can lead directly to improvements in public health. In a recent report, the group cited two examples from Massachusetts that it said were effective: Shape Up Somerville, which helped elementary school children lose weight by promoting physical activity, and the Physical Activity Club in Attleboro, which also helped children lose weight.
The idea of using the healthcare bill as a vehicle for preventing diseases has bipartisan appeal. President Obama has called for “the largest investment ever in preventive care, because that’s one of the best ways to keep our people healthy and our costs under control.’’ Enzi, too, has said that “reducing healthcare costs has to begin with promoting healthier behaviors.’’
But there is disagreement about the best way to do that. Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who is working closely with Kennedy on the healthcare bill, has criticized the current healthcare system for focusing on “sick care’’ and has called for more investment in a variety of measures that would help prevent diseases, including the community grants, restricting junk food in schools, and encouraging children to be more active.
“We spend 75 cents of every healthcare dollar treating people with chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and asthma, and only 4 cents on prevention,’’ Harkin said in a statement. “But the majority of these diseases can be prevented through lifestyle and environmental changes.’’
However, it can be difficult to quantify the benefits of a park or pathway, leading some critics to say such funding is an example how the healthcare legislation has spiraled out of control.
Enzi has said that instead of paying for pathways, it would be more effective to encourage lower insurance premiums for individuals who can prove they have taken steps to improve their health. He said that construction grants belong in other bills.
Enzi, the top Republican on the Senate health committee, has unsuccessfully pushed an amendment that would specifically prohibit the use of funds for sidewalks, streetlights, and other infrastructure projects.
Kennedy spokesman Coley said such proposed amendments are counterproductive, stressing that the projects would be modest and are not intended to replace larger ones that can be funded in other bills. Nonetheless, he said, the projects “may be a very cost-effective and long-lasting intervention.’’
Michael Kranish can be reached by email at kranish@globe.com
The add-ons - characterized as part of a broad effort to improve the nation’s health “infrastructure’’ - appear in House and Senate versions of the bill.
Critics argue the provision is a thinly disguised effort to insert pork-barrel spending into a bill that has been widely portrayed to the public as dealing with expanding health coverage and cutting medical costs. A leading critic, Senator Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican, ridicules the local projects, asking: “How can Democrats justify the wasteful spending in this bill?’’
But advocates, including Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, defend the proposed spending as a necessary way to promote healthier lives and, in the long run, cut medical costs. “These are not public works grants; they are community transformation grants,’’ said Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Kennedy, chairman of the Senate health committee whose healthcare bill includes the projects.
“If improving the lighting in a playground or clearing a walking path or a bike path or restoring a park are determined as needed by a community to create more opportunities for physical activity, we should not prohibit this from happening,’’ Coley said in a statement.
The Senate health panel’s bill does not specify how much would go to the community projects. A Senate staff member said the amount of spending will be left up to the Obama administration. A House version of the bill caps the projects at $1.6 billion per year and includes them in a section designed to save money in the long run by reducing obesity and other health problems.
It is not clear yet how the money would be allocated. The legislation says that grants will be awarded to local and state government agencies that will have to submit detailed proposals. The final decisions will be made by the secretary of Health and Human Services.
The proposal was inserted at the urging of a nonprofit, nonpartisan group called Trust for America’s Health, which produces reports about obesity and other health matters. Part of the group’s proposed language for the community grants was inserted into the Senate bill. It called for “creating the infrastructure to support active living and access to nutritious foods in a safe environment.’’ The group provided examples of grants for bike paths, jungle gyms, and lighting, though the Senate bill doesn’t list those specifics.
Jeffrey Levi, the group’s executive director, said that “it is easy to satirize’’ the projects, but they are needed to improve America’s health.
We will see a return on this investment if you use this money strategically for proven, evidence-based programs,’’ Levi said in an interview, citing efforts to stop smoking and to promote physical activity. “We will prevent or reverse chronic diseases such as heart disease. . . . It will pay for itself.’’
While many may think the healthcare bill strictly aims to increase coverage, Levi said that is a mistaken impression. “This isn’t just about health insurance,’’ he said. “This bill is about creating a healthier country.’’
The group says that a modest community project can lead directly to improvements in public health. In a recent report, the group cited two examples from Massachusetts that it said were effective: Shape Up Somerville, which helped elementary school children lose weight by promoting physical activity, and the Physical Activity Club in Attleboro, which also helped children lose weight.
The idea of using the healthcare bill as a vehicle for preventing diseases has bipartisan appeal. President Obama has called for “the largest investment ever in preventive care, because that’s one of the best ways to keep our people healthy and our costs under control.’’ Enzi, too, has said that “reducing healthcare costs has to begin with promoting healthier behaviors.’’
But there is disagreement about the best way to do that. Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who is working closely with Kennedy on the healthcare bill, has criticized the current healthcare system for focusing on “sick care’’ and has called for more investment in a variety of measures that would help prevent diseases, including the community grants, restricting junk food in schools, and encouraging children to be more active.
“We spend 75 cents of every healthcare dollar treating people with chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and asthma, and only 4 cents on prevention,’’ Harkin said in a statement. “But the majority of these diseases can be prevented through lifestyle and environmental changes.’’
However, it can be difficult to quantify the benefits of a park or pathway, leading some critics to say such funding is an example how the healthcare legislation has spiraled out of control.
Enzi has said that instead of paying for pathways, it would be more effective to encourage lower insurance premiums for individuals who can prove they have taken steps to improve their health. He said that construction grants belong in other bills.
Enzi, the top Republican on the Senate health committee, has unsuccessfully pushed an amendment that would specifically prohibit the use of funds for sidewalks, streetlights, and other infrastructure projects.
Kennedy spokesman Coley said such proposed amendments are counterproductive, stressing that the projects would be modest and are not intended to replace larger ones that can be funded in other bills. Nonetheless, he said, the projects “may be a very cost-effective and long-lasting intervention.’’
Michael Kranish can be reached by email at kranish@globe.com
found this on a forum about politics
I recieved this in an email written by Charlie Reese.
EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS WRITTEN IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred Senators, 435 Congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices -- 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red ..
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ .
If they do not receive Social Security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power..
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you, though you have several choices:
1. You can send this to everyone in your address book and hope "they" do something about it.
2. You can agree to "vote against" everyone that is currently in office, knowing that the process will take several years.
3. You can decide to "run for office" yourself and agree to do the job properly.
4. Lastly, you can sit back and do nothing or re-elect the current bunch.
Institute TERM LIMITS!!!
The Republicans and the Dems simply want us to hate each other.....divide and conquer if we elect people who follow the constitution we will all be better off, we can then have real change that will benifit the poorest as well as the middle class, and the rich will not be overburdened.
EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS WRITTEN IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.
Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.
You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.
One hundred Senators, 435 Congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices -- 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.
I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.
Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party. What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.
The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.
Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.
It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.
If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red ..
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ .
If they do not receive Social Security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.
There are no insoluble government problems.
Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power..
Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.
Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.
Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.
We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!
Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.
What you do with this article now that you have read it is up to you, though you have several choices:
1. You can send this to everyone in your address book and hope "they" do something about it.
2. You can agree to "vote against" everyone that is currently in office, knowing that the process will take several years.
3. You can decide to "run for office" yourself and agree to do the job properly.
4. Lastly, you can sit back and do nothing or re-elect the current bunch.
Institute TERM LIMITS!!!
The Republicans and the Dems simply want us to hate each other.....divide and conquer if we elect people who follow the constitution we will all be better off, we can then have real change that will benifit the poorest as well as the middle class, and the rich will not be overburdened.
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