Lord Monckton gives a more humorous speech on global warming alarmism at The Heartland Institute. Lord Monckton has had formal debates against the best of the AGW scientists and has won these debates so handily that none of them will debate him any more. Global warming alarmists stay out of Lord Monckton’s way hoping that they will never be in a position to face him.
At the risk of sounding conceited, I had the same problem at college. I also challenged the nice neo-Marxist ideologues at Climate Progress, but since they could not put a dent in my substance they were really great at calling me names. In 2008 a columnist at the old Huffington Post (pre AOL) named me the second most despised global warming skeptical columnist of the year. I won’t stop until I am number one.
In this speech Monckton laughs at global warming alarmists and the audience laughs with him. [Video links restored]
When Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) gave her inaugural address as speaker of the House in 2007, she vowed there would be “no new deficit spending.” Since that day, the national debt has increased by $5 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
“After years of historic deficits, this 110th Congress will commit itself to a higher standard: Pay as you go, no new deficit spending,” Pelosi said in her speech from the speaker’s podium. “Our new America will provide unlimited opportunity for future generations, not burden them with mountains of debt.”
Pelosi has served as speaker in the 110th and 111th Congresses.
Press coverage of the budget frenzy on Capitol Hill has suggested that pork-barrel earmark spending is still a bipartisan problem, that after months of self-righteous rhetoric about fiscal discipline, Republicans and Democrats remain equal-opportunity earmarkers.It’s not true. A new analysis by a group of federal-spending watchdogs shows a striking imbalance between the parties when it comes to earmark requests. Democrats remain raging spenders, while Republicans have made enormous strides in cleaning up their act. In the Senate, the GOP made only one-third as many earmark requests as Democrats for 2011, and in the House, Republicans have nearly given up earmarking altogether — while Democrats roll on.
The watchdog groups — Taxpayers for Common Sense, WashingtonWatch.com, and Taxpayers Against Earmarks — counted total earmark requests in the 2011 budget. Those requests were made by lawmakers earlier this year, but Democratic leaders, afraid that their party’s spending priorities might cost them at the polls, decided not to pass a budget before the Nov. 2 elections. This week, they distilled those earmark requests — threw some out, combined others — into the omnibus bill that was under consideration in the Senate until Majority Leader Harry Reid pulled it Thursday night. While that bill was loaded with spending, looking back at the original earmark requests tells us a lot about the spending inclinations of both parties.
In the 2011 House budget, the groups found that House Democrats requested 18,189 earmarks, which would cost the taxpayers a total of $51.7 billion, while House Republicans requested just 241 earmarks, for a total of $1 billion.
Where did those GOP earmark requests come from? Just four Republican lawmakers: South Carolina Rep. Henry Brown, who did not run for re-election this year; Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao, who lost his bid for re-election; maverick Texas Rep. Ron Paul; and spending king Rep. Don Young of Alaska. The other Republican members of the House — 174 of them — requested a total of zero earmarks.
Talk to Republicans, and they’ll say it would be nice if there were no earmark requests at all, but party leaders can’t control everybody. “Brown’s retiring, Cao’s defeated, Paul is Paul and Young is Young,” one GOP aide shrugs. Still, the bottom line is that the House GOP’s nearly perfect renunciation of earmarks is striking. “For a voluntary moratorium, it was impressive that there were only four scofflaws,” says Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
The Senate is a different story. But even though some Republicans are still seeking earmarks, Democrats are by far the bigger spenders. The watchdog groups found that Democrats requested 15,133 earmarks for 2011, for a total of $54.9 billion, while Republicans requested 5,352 earmarks, for a total of $22 billion.
If you look at the top 10 Senate earmarkers as measured by the total dollar value of earmarks requested, there are seven Democrats and three Republicans. (The leader of the pack is Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu, who requested $4.4 billion in earmarks.) The three Republicans are Sens. Roger Wicker, Sam Brownback and Thad Cochran. One of them, Brownback, is leaving the Senate, while the other two are from Mississippi, which is apparently earmark heaven.
Commentary:
Isn’t it interesting that the only time you hear about “deficits” from the Democrats and the elite media is when they want to raise tyour taxes? Then the Democrats drop a 1.1 trillion dollar spending bill in the hopper near the end of a lame duck session and what do we hear? The ….chirp….chirp….chirp… of crickets in the silence.
As the Deficit Commission has rightly pointed out tax rates need to be lowered for most individuals and businesses because the higher the rate the less the compliance, the higher the rate the more wealth goes overseas, the higher the rate the fewer will take risk, the higher the rate the less small businesses can hire. The simple truth is that the wealthy and upper middle class can take money and park it in a tax free growth account and leave it there. They have the option of not moving their money thus it cannot be taxed. It is for these reasons it is economic growth that generates real revenue, not high tax rates.
You heard the rhetoric all over the elite media and from the Democrat leadership, “If we don’t raise taxes on the “rich” the government will lose half a trillion dollars a year in revenue”. That entire narrative is a canard for the following reasons.
There are very few wage earners who make $250,000 a year.
The way the tax code is set up the majority of people who pay the top marginal tax rate and not individuals at all, but are Sub-S small businesses with 5 – 200 employees.
The half a trillion dollar number is generated from a series of formula’s that make up what is known as the “static Keynesian model”. These models not only are not accurate, but usually are not even clos,e as they do not account for changes in behavior that result from people changing the rules. For example: the government taxes every cheese burger 100 dollars. Since America consumes a billion cheese burgers a year the government estimates that the tax revenue will be $100 billion dollars.
Of course this leaves out the obvious, who would buy a cheeseburger of the government taxed each one $100? So along comes a Republican who proposes to lower the tax to $50 per cheese burger; along comes the media and the Democrats to cry that the tax cuts are costing the government $50 billion a year! Quite dishonest isn’t it?
Lowering tax rates resulted in increased revenue under Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton (second term tax cuts), and Bush II.
When we said nearly half of U.S. doctors might close their practices or retire early rather than live under the Democrats’ health overhaul, we were heavily criticized. The critics, though, were wrong.
Four in nine doctors responding to an IBD/TIPP poll sent out in August 2009 said they “would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement” if Congress passed what has become known as ObamaCare. That means as many as 360,000 physicians have plans to be doing something other than treating the growing number of patients in this country.
The doctors also told us — 67% to 22%, with 11% not responding — that they expected fewer students to apply for medical school in the future if the plan became law.
Given these views, it’s no surprise that 71% were doubtful that the government would be able to cover the 47 million uninsured Americans with better care at lower costs, which ObamaCare supporters have promised.
Other findings from our poll of 1,376 doctors included: six in 10 agreeing that the Democrats’ plan would strip drug companies of the incentives they need to make lifesaving pharmaceuticals, and 65% believing that a government overhaul would lead to lower-quality care for seniors.
The critics said our poll was not credible, was “shabby” and “garbage.” They accused IBD of being partisan, pursuing an agenda, trying to sway gullible readers with shameless journalism.
Useful rhetoric for keeping the left stirred up, but it was nothing more than an attempt to poison findings the critics didn’t like.
Now a Merritt Hawkins survey of 2,379 doctors for the Physicians Foundation completed in August has vindicated our poll. It found that 40% of doctors said they would “retire, seek a nonclinical job in health care, or seek a job or business unrelated to health care” over the next three years as the overhaul is phased in.
Of those who said they planned to retire, 28% are 55 or younger and nearly half (49%) are 60 or younger.
A larger portion (74%) said they plan to make “one or more significant changes in their practices in the next one to three years, a time when many provisions of health reform will be phased in.”
In addition to retirement, and finding nonclinical jobs elsewhere, those changes include working part time, closing practices to new patients, employment at a hospital, cutting back on the number of patients and switching to a cash or concierge practice.
A deeper look at the results reveals eight in 10 believe ObamaCare “will erode the viability of the private practice model” while six in 10 are convinced they will be compelled to “close or significantly restrict” their practices to at least one category of patient.
Over half (56%) said they believe the government takeover will affect the quality of care they are able to provide their patients and 86% said doctors weren’t “adequately represented to policymakers and the public during the run-up to passage of health reform.”
It’s significant that the Physicians Foundation survey was taken from the membership of the American Medical Association.
After initially indicating opposition to ObamaCare, that group supported the legislation. For that reason, Dr. Marc Siegel said Tuesday on Fox News that he would be “more worried about non-AMA members and what they have to say.”
We think that we already covered that concern with our 2009 poll.
Doctors simply don’t like what the Democrats have force-fed them. A large segment of the healing profession says it’s willing to close its doors rather than endure the problems that will be created by the overhaul.
Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of outcome that’s expected when lawmakers leave common sense behind and work far outside their moral and constitutional authority.
While Obama tried to stop offshore drilling and exploration here and while his administration puts more of our domestic resources off-limits, the White House is using taxpayer dollars to aid Petro-Brazil’s offshore drilling efforts in waters deeper than the United States. George Soros is an investor in PetroBraz and this falls in line with the view of the academic left, that the wealth of the united states should be redistributed to the rest of the world. One way to do that is to send our jobs overseas and to have us send our money abroad for energy.
“As our country looks for ways out of the hole of lackluster economic growth and job creation, today’s decision shows that this administration would rather keep digging than take the ladder to increased economic prosperity offered by developing our nation’s domestic energy resources. “The oil and natural gas industry is a reliable vehicle for growing the economy and creating good-paying jobs.
This decision shuts the door on new development off our nation’s coasts and effectively ensures that new American jobs will not be realized. It will stifle investment, deny billions in revenue for critical government services and increase our dependence on foreign energy sources.
“The oil and natural gas industry is committed to safe and environmentally responsible operations, and both the industry and regulators have added new safeguards to ensure such operations. This reversal on new lease sales off America’s coasts comes on top of a de facto moratorium, which has all but stopped new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.”
A Southern Methodist University (SMU) study released this week is no different, and it presents some alarming figures on the impact the de facto moratorium is having on shallow-water drilling.
According to Dr. Bernard L. Weinstein, associate director of SMU’s Maguire Energy Institute, the Interior Department’s slowdown in issuing new permits for shallow-water drilling operations could mean:
50,000 lost jobs;
Economic losses of $4.3 billion that would occur if 75 percent of the rigs become idle as a result of fewer issued permits; and
$12.5 billion in lost income nationwide.
As Dr. Weinstein points out, shallow-water drilling is extremely safe. In the last 15 years, the federal government reports that more than 11,000 wells have been drilled and just 15 barrels of oil have spilled as a result of a loss of well control:
“Shallow-water drillers work in less than 500 feet of water, mainly extracting natural gas. Projects center on well-charted fields of known pressure and geography, using simple and straightforward technology.”
Prior to the moratorium, 10 to 15 permits for new shallow-water wells were approved each month. But since April, only seven permits for new shallow-water wells have been issued, and 15 of 46 shallow-water rigs in the Gulf are idle.
As Jack Gerard mentioned in a blog post last week, a drilling slowdown hurts more than just oil companies. It’s time to put the oil and natural gas industry back to work and produce reliable American energy for Americans
Is Obama’s entire Middle East policy designed to undermine Israel?
Let us put everything on the wall and examine it.
The dictators in the Middle East kept the Muslim Brotherhood and the Al-Qeada’s at bay. They were necessary for Israel’s security. Mubarak was critical to maintaining the Israeli/Egyptian Peace Treaty.
Now President Obama is arming the Middle East to the gills, including modern tanks to Egypt in spite of the fact that the new authorities are engaging in Taliban like behavior such as attacking peaceful Coptic Christians with armored military vehicles.
If our entire policy is designed to undermine Israel’s security it explains why Obama was not interested in helping the Iranian freedom movement.
The second highest number of suicide bombers and foreign militants fighting us in Iraq are from Benghazi, Libya which is exactly where the rebel uprising against Gadaffi began. So it is no surprise just who these rebels are.
It could be that the arms sales are an effort to resist Iranian influence. In the case of Bahrain the Iranian backed Shia population (about half the country) is allied with leftists in an effort to gain control away from the Sunni government.
The House of Saud will not allow a Shia government on the peninsula and it is not clear how the Iranians will react to more crackdowns. Of course the left is using the crackdowns as a propaganda tool to try to bring international pressure to keep the Sunni’s and the government from resisting Iranian influence. This leaves an important question. If all of these arms sales are designed to prevent more direct Iranian actions or Iranian backed uprisings why would the Obama administration let the Iranian freedom movement fall flat on its face with no support?
Is this about Israel, Iran, or is our foreign policy so divided between the State Department, the CIA, DoD, and the White House that we have a policy that is flailing about without a focus or unified intent?
Remember that Clinton/Gingrich Welfare Reform that was so effective at stopping people from gaming the system and helping people get back to work? Did you know it was reversed with the Obama Stimulus Bill?
Government payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population, a record figure that will only increase if action isn’t taken before the majority of Baby Boomers enter retirement.
Even as the economy has recovered, social welfare benefits make up 35 percent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 percent in 2000 and 10 percent in 1960, according to TrimTabs Investment Research using Bureau of Economic Analysis data.
“The U.S. economy has become alarmingly dependent on government stimulus,” said Madeline Schnapp, director of Macroeconomic Research at TrimTabs, in a note to clients. “Consumption supported by wages and salaries is a much stronger foundation for economic growth than consumption based on social welfare benefits.”
With Glenn Beck, Reagan Budget Advisor Art Laffer, and Chris Edwards from the CATO Institute.
This is very interesting. Why is it that the second biggest domestic economic depression on record is scrubbed from our history books, including many economic texts? What made the Roaring 20’s Roar? And what President’s enacted policy saw an even faster economic turn around than Reagan’s?
The accomplishments of Calvin Coolidge are many and he was one of our greatest presidents. He helped lead the united states out of a depression caused in large part by the progressive policies of Woodrow Wilson, he helped to restore liberty and was the man largely responsible for making the “Roaring Twenties” roar. We featured him BEFORE. Coolidge’s accomplishments have been largely scrubbed from textbooks and he was the Reagan of his time.
Dr. Alan Snyder is professor of American history and chair of the Department of Historical, Legal, and Leadership Studies at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida.
Ronald Reagan admired him a lot. In fact, when Reagan was looking over his new house—the White House—shortly after his inaugural in 1981, he entered into the Cabinet Room.
On the wall were portraits of Truman, Jefferson, and Lincoln. The White House curator commented at the time, “If you don’t like Mr. Truman, you can move Mr. Truman out.” Even though Reagan, a former Democrat, had voted for Truman back in 1948, he made his decision: Truman’s portrait was removed and one of Calvin Coolidge was dusted off and put in its place.
Nowadays, in all the “right” circles [to be found primarily among the academic elite], the person of Coolidge is a source of amusement, if not outright derision. Why, he was a do-nothing president, someone who didn’t use the power of the office as he should have. Probably his most grievous sin, in their view, was the way he put the brakes on destiny: he was a foe of the progressive movement that was intended to reshape American government and culture.
Coolidge, whose administration spanned a good part of the 1920s, was a throwback to an earlier time. He was not a Woodrow Wilson; rather, he believed in the vision of the Founding Fathers and their concept of limited government. He remained true to the principles of self-government and the sanctity of private property. The rule of law was paramount in his political philosophy. No one was above the law, a belief that, if followed, would keep the people safe from the power of an overextended government.
During the 1920s, the continent of Europe experimented with socialism. What might larger government be able to accomplish? What vistas await us once we unleash the full power of government intervention? Coolidge stood opposed to this false vision of the future.
Historians also like to make fun of his approach to speechmaking. Coolidge preferred to say as little as possible. As he once noted, he never got in trouble for things he didn’t say. Yet when he did speak, he made some very significant pronouncements. His words conveyed key ideas for American success. Meditate on this paragraph, for instance:
Calvin Coolidge
In a free republic a great government is the product of a great people. They will look to themselves rather than government for success. The destiny, the greatness of America lies around the hearthstone. If thrift and industry are taught there, and the example of self-sacrifice oft appears, if honor abide there, and high ideals, if there the building of fortune be subordinate to the building of character, America will live in security, rejoicing in an abundant prosperity and good government at home and in peace, respect, and confidence abroad. If these virtues be absent there is no power that can supply these blessings. Look well then to the hearthstone, therein all hope for America lies.
Notice Coolidge’s stress on what he called the “hearthstone,” which is a designation for the family. He saw the family as the cornerstone of society, the place where character should be developed. Note also his subordination of financial fortune to the building of character. Fortune may come, but only if character comes first: thrift, industry, and honor—qualities in short supply at the moment.
America was prosperous during the Coolidge years. The Great Depression was just around the corner, but it didn’t occur as a result of Coolidge’s policies of tax cuts and economic liberty. The Depression was more a result of misdirection from the Federal Reserve [low cash reserves in banks; easy credit]; its continuation throughout the 1930s was due to government actions of the New Deal.
If there’s one thing most historians can agree on with Coolidge, it’s that he easily would have won reelection in 1928 had he chosen to run again. Yet he voluntarily stood down. Why? What prompted that decision? He tells us what led him to do so in his autobiography.
It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness. They live in an artificial atmosphere of adulation and exultation which sooner or later impairs their judgment. They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.
Coolidge saw the problems associated with elected office. He knew that men often developed what might be called the “swelled-head syndrome.” He wanted nothing to do with that. If for no other reason, Coolidge should be honored for his willingness to set aside power and maintain his good character. Where are the politicians willing to do that today?
Coolidge’s thoughts on self-delusion mirror’s our critique of leftist academia and the political class that I stated my old college blog, “they pat each other on the back and tell each other how brilliant they are….and after all it MUST be true because all of these PhD. types tell them so. Invariably this environment brings you to a point where you start to believe it. You internalize it and eventually you stop challenging your own assumptions. The end result is an atrophied thinking process”. The result as I have been telling people who are willing to listen for several years is self-delusion.
This is not from any light-weight folks, this is linked on Dr. Greg Mankiw.
Mankiw wrote one of the most respected series of econ college textbooks used in universities today.
Dr. Mankiw:
Tim Conley and Bill Dupor have a new paper on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (that is, the Obama stimulus bill). Their empirical findings:
Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services.
Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services.
So the American people borrowed and spent close to a trillion dollars to destroy a net of more than one-half million jobs. Does President Obama understand this? I very much doubt it. When he expressed puzzlement at the idea that the stimulus money may not have been well-spent, and said that “spending equals stimulus,” he betrayed a shocking level of economic ignorance.
The Obama administration has repeatedly said job creation is a top priority, but apparently the memo seems to have missed the bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
This became evident when EPA Assistant Administrator Mathy Stanislaus testified Thursday before an Environment and Energy subcommittee hearing that his agency does not take jobs into account when it issues new regulations.
“We have not directly taken a look at jobs in the proposal,” Stanislaus said, referring to a regulation that would govern industries that recycle coal ash and other fossil fuel byproducts.
Coal ash is commonly used to make concrete stronger and longer lasting, make wallboard more durable and improve the quality of roofing shingles.
Stanislaus made his comments in response to questioning by Colorado GOP Rep. Cory Gardner looking into whether the EPA is complying with a recent presidential executive order and considering jobs in its regulatory regime. The EPA issued a April 30, 2010 statement in the appendix of its regulatory impact analysis for proposed regulation under the Resources and Recovery Act (RCRA) of coal ash.
That statement said: “The [regulatory impact assessment] does not include either qualitative or quantitative estimation of the potential effects of the proposed rule on economic productivity, economic growth, employment, job creation or international economic competitiveness.”
The statement contradicts Executive Order 13563, which President Obama signed in January requiring rules to take job creation into account when federal agencies issue new rules.
Gardner pressed Stanislaus as to whether or not EPA had done a direct economic analysis on how the rule would affect jobs, to which Stanislaus replied saying that EPA had not included jobs in its cost-benefit analysis of the rule.
“Do you feel an economic analysis that does not include the complete picture on jobs, is that a full economic analysis?” Gardner asked. “I think it is really a yes or no question.
“To me, I don’t see how you can talk about economic analysis without talking about jobs… and you said that you would not promulgate a rule where the costs would exceed the benefits,” Gardner continued. “But if you are not taking into account jobs, I don’t see how that goes.”
Gardner’s line of questioning had Stanislaus visibly dumbfounded, and he repeatedly told the congressman he would have to get back to him with the answers to his questions.
You can look at the 2010 Budget Chart Book HERE. Just click on the tabs near the top of the web page for the categories and then you will see sub-categories allowing you to examine almost any meaningful statistic imaginable.
Be sure to look at this chart right HERE to find out just who it is that have been paying taxes and you will see that the top 10% of wage earners paid 71% of federal income tax. But there are two very important thing you should know about this stat.
Starting in 2008 and more so today, this number is going down and more tax burden is being transferred away from the wealthy and investor and production classes. Why? because when you have a government that is this active and when you have this level of economic and regulatory and fiscal uncertainty those who can invest or take risk park their money so it is not taxed or they invest it in a safe place like China, where the leaders have some economic common sense. As a result the tax burden is transfered to the middle class, working poor and small businesses.
The other thing you should know is that for the super rich and the very well connected it does not matter what the wage earner (small business) tax rate is, because they have loopholes in the 60,000 page tax code made for them and in the case of those like Teresa Kerry or George Soros much of their income is defined as either non taxable or not taxable at the wage earner rate. Now what party has been saying that we need to have a flatter and more simple tax code to help avoid this problem?
Lee Doren of “How The World Works” explains how tax cuts and increases work in a progressive income tax system like we have here in the United States.
Let us examine some charts that help to illustrate this further.
Here is the tax burden by taxable income that came out at the middle of the Bush Presidency:
You see when tax rates are cut and the economy grows the upper and top parts of the PRODUCER CLASS (notice I did not say rich as many of the super rich are NOT producers) pay the lions share of federal income taxes. Those who produce actually produce more, invest more, take more risk and hire more people when the economy grows. So as they pay a lower tax rate they actually pay more in real dollars because they are punished less by moving their money and takling risk.
Now let us look at the tax burden as it is today. According to the Tax Foundation:
Incomes reported by tax returns at the high end of the income spectrum plummeted from 2007 to 2008, as did their share of the nation’s income and income taxes paid.
In 2008, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid 38.0 percent of all federal individual income taxes and earned 20.0 percent of adjusted gross income, compared to 2007 when those figures were 40.4 percent and 22.8 percent, respectively. Both of those figures—share of income and share of taxes paid—were their lowest since 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI) and paid 36.9 percent of federal individual income taxes.
Each year from 2005 to 2007, the top 1 percent’s constantly growing share of income earned and taxes paid set a record. That trend reversed in 2008. In fact, the income share for the top 1 percent of tax returns was lower in 2008 than in 2000, largely due to differences in capital gains.
Another indicator of this reversal in the income and tax shares of the top 1 percent is that during 2007, the top 1 percent had actually paid more in federal income tax than the bottom 95 percent, a comparison that was much remarked on a year ago. But the diminished income of the top 1 percent in 2008 means that the comparison no longer holds. During 2008, the bottom 95 percent (AGI under $159,619) paid 41.3 percent of the total collected, a larger share than the 38.0 percent paid by the top 1 percent (AGI over $380,354).
The top-earning 5 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $159,619), however, still paid far more than the bottom 95 percent. The top 5 percent earned 34.7 percent of the nation’s adjusted gross income, but paid approximately 58.7 percent of federal individual income taxes.
So why did the percentage of the tax burden of “the rich” during most of the Bush presidency go UP year after year till 2007, even after the so called “tax cuts to the rich”?
And why in 2008 did a huge portion of the tax burden get shifted to the working middle class and poor?
It is just as we said, if the incentive is there to produce, if the taxes are low and if the risk is measurable those wealthier Americans and producers will take more risk and be more economically active. If you remove the incentive by threatening them with taxes, cap & trade, ObamaCare, tons of regulations, bureaucrats and the corruption that always follows such policies it creates uncertainty investors and producers can no longer make a measured risk. This is when they bottle their money up or invest it in China, who is smart enough not to punish investors and producers for taking risk.
This shows that the tax rate that the producers or “the rich” pay is secondary to certainty, confidence, and economic growth as to how much tax they pay in real dollars.
It is ironic that the left, who claims to pass this stuff in the name of the middle class and “soaking the rich”, in real dollars accomplish exactly the opposite of their stated intent. It ends up that it is the producing middle class who gets soaked with more tax burden and more inflation.
The way to crush the middle class is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation. – Vladimir Lenin
ABC’s Jake Tapper on the double standard: “What would candidate Obama have said if Bush’s jobs adviser ran a company which outsourced thousands of jobs and paid no taxes on $14 billion in profits?
Jeffery Immelt with Obama
Politico (and Politico is very left friendly folks):
The results of GE’s tight relationship with the Obama administration are starting to show.
The company’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, went from being an Obama ally on green energy to being one of his top outside advisers on the economy in the last two years.
In the process, The New York Times reports, GE had one of its best years in 2010, in part by getting a huge tax benefit from Uncle Sam.
Last year, the company paid nothing to the government. Instead, the government paid GE $3.2 billion in tax breaks.
“Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore,” according to The Times.
Some combination of aggressive lobbying for green energy tax incentives — for which the administration had pushed aggressively in the Recovery Act and in President Obama’s budgets to Congress over the last two year — and strategies run out of its in-house tax department have made GE one of the leading companies in reducing its corporate tax burden.
When Immelt was named the chairman of Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in January, he acknowledged that his company has a reputation for running most of its business overseas, the result of more than three decades of reducing its domestic operations to minimize costs.
“I know that despite the fact that 60 percent of GE’s revenues are outside of the United States, I personally and this company share in the responsibly and the accountability to make sure that this is the most competitive and productive country in the world,” Immelt said in January.
But he neglected to mention that GE’s offshore operation also allows it to avoid paying most of its taxes to the federal government.
GE’s spokesman told the Times that reducing its tax burden is part of the company’s “responsibility” to its shareholders.
But it also appears to run contrary to Obama’s rhetoric about slowing the rapid offshoring of American jobs.
Some believe that party of this story is the Obama Administration sticking it to Texas just as the Obama Administration is also doing to Texas in regards to the fires.
The government says that where there is oil drilling there are less of these lizards per mile. An interesting method of measurement as there are no shortage of deer and how much space in my home town is covered by parking lots and malls? Deer can be seen every day and is hunted just to keep the numbers from getting out of control.
Massive new oil shale finds have been found in Texas and parts of New Mexico, enough to increase domestic production by 25%. The Obama Administration, if recent history is a guide, won’t have that. The lizard is very skiddish and lives mostly under the sand, so most people have never seen one (hmm I wonder how hard that makes them to count).
ABC News:
The sand dune lizard is a small reptile that has become the scourge of the Texas Oil industry, not because it is dangerous but because the threatened species could put land ripe for oil exploration off limits.
“As far as I am concerned, it is Godzilla,” Texas land commissioner Jerry Paterson told ABC News. “[It’s] the biggest threat facing the oil business in memory,” said Ben Shepperd, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association. They believe the small tan-colored, insectivorous lizard could cost the oil industry and surrounding communities thousands of jobs.
About 63,000 Americans work in the oil and gas well industry as of September 2009, the most recent period available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages program. Most of those jobs are in Texas.
The federal government said the sand lizard is on the verge of extinction, and is expected to place it on the endangered species list soon.
If the species makes the list, its 800,000 acre habitat in the shinnery oak sand dune communities of southeastern New Mexico and southwestern Texas would receive protected status. That habitat happens to be right in the heart of Texas oil country.
“If the lizard is put on the endangered species list, then [rigs] would [be] shutdown,” Leslyn Wallace, a land manager at RSP Permian, told ABC News. That would cost many Texans their jobs.
But here is the rub, The eco-radicals in the government have used the Endangered Species Act as a weapon before to target the industries they despise. After the polar bear population had risen 30% the government decided to put the polar bear on the endangered species list anyways because of reductions in polar sea ice, which saw a cyclical low in 2007, but had already rebounded 27% in the following year and is still growing today.
Today the elite media is almost orgasmic in praise for President Obama in the reported death of Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi.
So let me get this straight:
Gadaffi dead = good.
Saddam Hussein’s murderous sons killed = possible violation of international law.
Iraqi regime taken down = bad. Unnecessary war of choice. Who cares if they shot at our planes, invaded an ally, threatened to invade another, handed cash to terror groups and violated a cease fire agreement.
Elected government takes power in Iraq with a successful and peaceful change of power after successive elections = bad. Hopeless lost cause time to leave.
Egypt ousting of Mubarak with US help = good.
Muslim Brotherhood (Al-Qaeda grandparent) take over of Egypt with Lara Logan gang raped, women given “virginity tests” by the military, and armored military vehicles used against Coptic Christians in Egypt = Obama inspired democratic revolution.
Obama sells 125 M1 tanks to Egypt = good.
Obama helps oust Gaddafi = good.
Al-Qeada and Muslim Brotherhood commanders lead rebels in Libya = stay tuned for the Obama inspired democratic revolution.
1979: Carter helps oust Shaw of Iran, a dictator who wasn’t all peaches and cream but was certainly better than Gaddafi or Mubarak = good.
[This is a flashback from December 2010 and Obama is STILL talking about raising taxes on business and so are the Van Jones inspired “occupy” protesters. Remember that “giant sucking sound” that we used to talk about with Mexico?]
This leaves the United States with the highest corporate tax rate in the world.
Of course the little truth about the corporate tax rate is this, corporations never pay this, you do in the form of higher prices. All expenses of goods and services are passed on to the consumer which is you. Corporate taxes are just a way for government to raise your taxes and hide it in the form of higher prices. Of course some companies cannot raise their prices and stay competitive so they leave the country and go to China, Canada, Ireland, Mexico or Brazil.
President Obama’s own deficit commission said that we need lower rates and a leaner tax code to bring business here and to help spur compliance. Indeed, they said that the tax rates should be made lower so the government could collect more revenue to lower the debt. John Kerry even advocated lowering the corporate tax rate when he ran for president. The high tax rate combined with a 16,000 page tax code allows for government to pick winners and losers which generates corruption and paybacks. This is a no brainer folks, it needs to get done.
Will the Democrats do the right thing and lower the rate to bring jobs here? Or will they insist that the best way to grow the middle class is by waging a war of taxes, regulation, and uncertainty on their employers? And by trashing the currency with policy and monetizing the debt (printing money out of thin air). [See Cloward-Piven Strategy LINK1 and LINK2 – Editor]
[YouTube is nuking conservative vids again – You can see the video HERE]
UPDATE – Steve Forbes on why business is not hiring [YouTube nuked this one as well. You can watch the video HERE] :
These facts have been coming out for a year yet they have fallen out of the dialogue. It is time to remind each other and our friends. With the demise of the CLASS Act it is now worse. We said that ObamaCare would cost a trillion dollars to implement and every day new evidence moves us closer and closer to that number.
The government’s chief actuary for Medicare spending on Wednesday said he had more confidence that Republican Paul Ryan’s plan to reform entitlements would drive down health-care costs than President Obama’s recently passed overhaul.
Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, made the comment in response to questions from lawmakers during House Budget Committee hearing.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat from Maryland, went on the attack against committee chairman Paul Ryan’s “Road Map” plan, which is a long-term proposal to make entitlement spending solvent.
Van Hollen pressed Foster on whether Ryan’s plan would work, prompting Foster to point out that one of the biggest problems in health care now is that most new technology that is developed increases costs rather than decreasing it.
“If there’s a way to turn around the mindset for the people who do the research and development … to get them to focus more on cost-reducing tech and less on cost increasing technology, if you can do that then one of biggest components of [increasing costs] turns to your side,” Foster said. “If you can put that pressure on the research and development community, you might have fighting chance of changing the nature of new medical technology in a way that makes lower cost levels possible.”
Foster said: “The Road Map has that potential. There is some potential for the Affordable Care Act price reductions, though I’m a little less confident about that.”
The thinking behind Foster’s comment is that a voucher system would reduce the amount of government money available for health care over time, causing consumers to shop around and creating an incentive in the health-care sector to compete for those dollars.
In a brief interview outside the House chamber later in the day, Ryan explained it this way: “There’s only going to be so much money for health care because the economy can only support so much … So is it better spent through the person in a competitive marketplace or through the government under increasing price controls and pressure?”
“If you go through the century, these entitlements consume all money. The GAO calculation assumes Congress is going to wise up and cut back on these programs because people will decide they don’t want 100 percent of their discretionary income going to health care. They want some for food and some for shelter and some for other things. So there will be a curtailment of health care spending in the future,” Ryan said. “The question is which curtailment gets you the better results at going after the cause of health inflation: consumer pressure or government price controls.”
Consumer confidence has been in the tank since march.
If you want to know what is going on with the economy in recent months, Dick Morris has a very good explanation in this video.
Dick Morris was the political strategist for Bill Clinton for many years.
Speaking of the former President, Bill Clinton seems to have had enough. For a while he was openly criticizing Obama’s mis-steps with the economy, especially the illegal offshore drilling ban, the yanking of coal permits etc.
This may have also been a political shot across the bow. The Obama Administration was jerking Hillary around for months starting with the Egypt/Libya debacle. The State Department thinks it has agreement across the administration on Middle-East policy, makes a cautious yet sensible statement on the position of the United States, and Obama comes out the very next day and contradicts it. This kind of thing happened too often to be an accident and is obviously designed to marginalize her. Niall Ferguson asked if we have two foreign policies and mocked the administration. It shows a great immaturity at the White House. It also confuses and undermines the confidence of our allies.
Being a cabinet Secretary is a brutal job. It is often seven days a week and 13 hours a day. Most Cabinet Secretaries last around 20 months. Obviously there are exceptions but that tells you how brutal the job can be. I have seen recent pictures of Hillary lately and she is not looking well.
I am not saying that Hillary resign because she is doing a bad job, although she is not among the best who had held the position, she should resign because the situation in the administration is intolerable and may be designed to do her political damage.
Fiscally responsible states usually ran by Republicans and Conservative Democrats gained 10 House seats according to Census data.
People are voting with their feet. Over 150 businesses left California to move to Texas in just the last year. Missouri may now be changing to a “right to work state”. Union over reach and greed has sent jobs overseas. Ford Motor Company has a new high-tech plant that can make five cars on a single line at once. Union rules do not permit the advanced technology Ford needs so they have built these plants in Canada, Mexico and Brazil.
Union over reach in the public sector (government unions) is causing some states to go bankrupt. The states cannot afford the corruption and sweetheart deals that result from abusive public sector unions.
Keep in mind this is census data from late 2010, so one would imagine that the situation is more pronounced today.
[And as is so often the case, when there is a video that is popular with conservative bloggers YouTube makes it go poof. The video can be watched HERE]
[Flashback February 2011- these same occupy rent-a-protesters showing us their civility that they like to lecture Sarah Palin on.]
The elite media likes to tell you that the Tea Party are hateful racists, in spite of the fact that there is no good evidence to demonstrate that. However getting people to say these types of things at almost any left of center protest is easy (especially on most any college campus where there are plenty of unhinged Marxist professors and indoctrinated students in one place). I have seen it first hand as a former counter protester myself. What are the odds of seeing this on NBC News?
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1970 by John Gardner as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest.
The IRS considers them a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt public charity because they are “non-partisan” (non partisan my ear…), so yes indeed being tax exempt means that YOU help subsidize them.
WASHINGTON — Top Democratic fundraisers and lobbyists with links to the White House are behind a proposed wind farm in Texas that stands to get $450 million in stimulus money, even though a Chinese company would operate the farm and its turbines would be built in China.
The farm’s backers also have close ties with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who, at the height of his hard-fought re-election bid this fall, helped blunt congressional criticism over stimulus dollars possibly going to create jobs in China by endorsing a proposal by the Chinese company to build a factory in his home state. Although his campaign received thousands of dollars in donations from the wind farm’s backers and Reid stood on stage with them at a campaign event they hosted, his office declined to answer any questions about the wind farm’s organizers or their plans for Nevada.
The wind farm, first announced more than a year ago, would consist of 300 2-megawatt wind turbines, each perched atop a 26-story-tall steel tower and spinning three blades — each half the length of a football field. The farm would span three counties and 36,000 acres in West Texas land best known for its oil. Dubbed the Spinning Star wind farm, the project’s 600-megawatt capacity is, theoretically, enough to power 180,000 American homes and would be the sixth-largest wind farm in the country.
It is being planned by an unusual joint partnership between the U.S. Renewable Energy Group, a Dallas investment firm with strong ties to Washington and the Democratic Party, and A-Power Energy Generation Systems, an upstart Chinese supplier of wind turbines. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission indicate the Chinese are bringing financing and the turbines.
What the Americans are supplying is the local know-how and political clout in Washington, where decisions on how to distribute billions in loan guarantees, stimulus grants and financial incentives are made.
The clock is ticking for Spinning Star: To claim the stimulus grant it must arrange its financing and begin work on the wind farm by Dec. 31. Besides the $450 million stimulus grant, A-Power’s SEC filings indicate the joint-venture also will pursue a Department of Energy-backed loan guarantee. According to the SEC filings, the project is waiting to hear if it will receive the loan guarantee before financing will follow to build the turbines.
[Flashback February 2011: There was a glimmer of a recovery but now it seems that what we saw back in February was just inventory restocking. Time has demonstrated Dr. Sowell’s warning as he was not optimistic in this video when “economists” the elite media talked to were “surprised” by the monthly bad economic news. They were surprised every month for two and a half years.]
The video is of Dr. Thomas Sowell who is likely the greatest and most published economist alive. He is a free market guy so that is why many college students may not have heard of him. The use of Dr. Sowell’s materials is virtually banned at some universities such as Indiana University at South Bend. The left, as well as the IU administration, is very hostile to Dr. Sowell because he is a black economist who believes in and understands the free market.
Dr. Sowell appeared on Wednesday night’s “The Kudlow Report,” on CNBC to promote his book, “Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to Economics.” Host Larry Kudlow asked Sowell about the current outlook and his long-term predictions for the economic system as a whole in the United States. The senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution replied that politics plays into the answer.
I have never seen Dr. Sowell so concerned. As some economists have said, this recession is different. Combine that with the fact that government has so effectively chased wealth out of the country and undermined economic confidence that unless we change government culture permanently and do it soon the United States may be done as an economic super power.
[Flashback March 2011. Since our Egypt and Libya policy are ending in disaster with the Muslim Brotherhood taking power in both countries, with Christians being slaughtered and in the case of Egypt, being attacked by government armored vehicles, and the Obama administration selling tanks, choppers, small arms, and missiles to Egypt and other countries in the Islamic world, we thought a second look at the editor’s previous coverage of this category is in order. The category list is on the lower right hand pane of the page. – Editor]
I was writing this long post as I was going through the speech and then I see my friend Scott Ott at PJTV posted a video which totally stole my thunder. Since a video is much more entertaining than a wall of textual analysis I will just post the video with a few observations of my own.
In Iraq we had real national interests. Saddam was giving money and other material support to terror groups including al-Qaeda. He had violated a cease-fire agreement and the diplomatic credibility was being trashed (if you do not think that this is a good reason to go to war than respectfully, you do not understand history, diplomacy or geopolitics worth a darn). There were 25 reasons in the Congressional resolution but a very important one went unspoken; Iraq is among the most cosmopolitan and secular Muslim countries, if we can make Democracy work there the Middle East has a chance, if we cannot we know what we have to prepare for.
There is one problem though. What are our national interests in this operation? Revenge for Pan Am 103 and the bombing in Europe. I can see that but its a little late on that score with all do respect to the families who are understandably crying out for justice. The question of pay back has value, but is it an honest argument by those who are making it?
The easy flow of oil is an interest but Libya doesn’t make a great deal of it when compared to other countries.
We are facing a very likely possibility that the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda will fill the power vacuum if Ghadaffi leaves and that is even worse than leaving Ghadaffi intact. If this is indeed the case than removing Ghadaffi goes against our national interests, which Bill Whittle alludes to in his comments below.
There have been some on the right who have had a double standard on this issue, they wanted Obama to go in, and now that he has they are all over him. A few have blatantly flip-flopped, but most are questioning why it took 30 days to make the decision. If it was a priority why not go in three weeks before when the rebels were getting slaughtered?
I refused to support any action there because I feared that whoever took power after Ghadaffi would be worse. In the case of Iraq we stayed to make sure that wouldn’t happen.
[Editor’s Note – You will notice Bill Whittle get a tad emotional in this video. Bill follows every word this president says in detail. He is very aware of how Obama will say that “government needs to live within its means” one day and offer up a budget with $1.6 trillion yearly deficits the next. Or how Obama will brag about how there was not one earmark in the failed Stimulus Bill and days later sign a $411 billion omnibus bill with 8000 earmarks in it. This is the same Obama that took credit for global oil production being up, in spite of the fact that he has instituted an illegal offshore drilling ban that reduced domestic production. The same Obama that blasts the oil industry for having oil leases that are not being drilled upon, while at the same time erecting regulatory hurdles that prevent them from using the leases while his environmental-extremist allies sue at each step of the permit process. So in short Bill has had it with this president, as any informed and sincere person would.]
I thought that the most ironic moment was when President Obama asked if we had to wait for pictures of mass graves before we did anything.
The interesting thing about irony is that it often brings you to the front door of hypocrisy.
This speech was such a plagiarization of what President Bush said of Iraq that the White House should start sending royalty checks to Texas.
UPDATE – Sarah Palin gives her policy review on this issue (video LINK). In short: Now that we are there if we let Ghadaffi stay in power he will live to seek revenge upon us, if we take him down it seems al-Qeada and/or Muslim Brotherhood may take over. Sound familiar?
“If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” – Malcolm X
Political Arena 