Tag Archives: business

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, Editorial, Gangsta Govt, Obama, Pay to Play, Treason, True Talking Points

Senator Hatch: Obama Holding Country Hostage With Tax Plan

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The GOP needs to get the message out that the tax the Democrats wish to raise does not have much impact on millionaires and billionaires, because most of their income is defined as “unearned”; rather it will impact the small businesses who actually employ people the most.

Remember that new taxes that are designed to soak the rich for some reason just don’t. Instead they impact the productive middle class and risk takers which benefits large, well connected mega-corps.

Newsmax:

President Barack Obama blamed Republicans on Saturday for a stalemate that could increase taxes on Americans next year while a leading Senate Republican cast Obama and his Democratic Party as obstructionists who want to place the tax burden on businesses during an economic slowdown.

In his weekly radio and online address, Obama pressed the Republican-controlled House to extend Bush-era tax cuts for households making $250,000 or less while letting lower rates on wealthier taxpayers expire and go up. The Democratic-controlled Senate narrowly passed such a measure earlier in the week, but the House is not expected to follow suit.

“Instead of doing what’s right for middle-class families and small-business owners, Republicans in Congress are holding these tax cuts hostage until we extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans,” Obama said.

Responding on behalf of the congressional GOP, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said Obama’s plan would do more harm to the economy and criticized him with almost identical language. He called for extending current tax rates for all taxpayers and spending 2013 overhauling and simplifying the tax code.

“Raising taxes as our economy continues to struggle is not a solution, and the majority of Americans and businesses understand that,” Hatch said. “The president and his Washington allies need to stop holding America’s economy hostage in order to raise taxes on those trying to lead our economic recovery.”

2012 Primary, Econ, Elite Media, Obama, True Talking Points

Unending Woeful Economic News Socking Obama Administration – UPDATED!

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… but look on the bright side. The elite media is talking up the ‘recovery’.

UPDATE – Economy is losing more jobs than people are getting jobs while another $150,000 leave the workforce, giving up:

(CNSNews.com) – There were 195,000 fewer people employed in the United States in July than in June, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as the national unemployment rate ticked up from 8.2 percent to 8.3 percent.

Meanwhile, 150,000 people simply dropped out of the labor force during the month and did not seek to find a job.

In June, according to BLS, there had been 142,415,000 people employed in the United States. In July, that dropped to 142,220,000–a decline of 195,000 [WSJ LINK – Editor].

Similarly, in June, there were 155,163,000 people in the civilian labor force in the United States. To be counted in the civilian labor force, person must be 16 years old or older, not be in the military, prison or a mental institution, and either have a job or have actively looked for a job in the past four weeks.

In July, the number of people in the civilian labor force was 155,013,000–a decline of 150,000 from June.

Senate Votes to Raise Taxes on Small Businesses:

Yesterday, the Senate narrowly voted (51-48) to raise taxes on 1.2 million small businesses, which will likely kill more than 700,000 jobs at a time when nearly 13 million Americans are out of work. Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jim Webb (D-VA) joined all Republicans in bipartisan opposition to the tax hike.

This is President Obama’s economic plan. This is what he asked Congress to do. And he recently told a fundraising crowd that his economic plan has been working.

Americans Getting On Disability Now Outpacing Americans Finding Jobs.

It still hasn’t bottomed out. In June housing sales dropped 8.4%.

New durable goods orders dropped 1.1%.

Business owners have no confidence in Obama and just wont hire until he is gone.

Census numbers show 200,000 small businesses closed from 2008-2010.

Rising corn prices at record levels (and are causing food riots overseas and much of this is due to bad energy policy).

U.S. economic growth slows in second quarter.

Ten bad economic indicators.

And 20 more bad economic indicators (read this one).

Some more bad news linked on DrudgeReport:

O NO: 8.2%


Just 80,000 jobs added in June...


One-third at temp agencies...


85,000 WENT ON DISABILITY IN JUNE!


Broader Jobless Rate At 14.9%...


Unemployment rate for blacks jumps to 14.4%...


Rate stuck at 11% for Hispanics...


780,000 Fewer Women Employed Under Obama...


Romney: 'It Doesn't Have To Be This Way'...


'Kick in the gut has got to end'...


Anxiety mounts as economy limps into 2nd half...


DOW PLUNGES...


Team Obama predicted 5.6% today with stimulus...


IMF to cut global growth forecast...


'Tilted to the downside'...


Jobless claims surge...


REPORT: Foreclosure crisis hits older blacks, Hispanics hardest...


Factory activity contracts...


Home sales drop 5.4%, fewest since October...


Grocery bills on rise as corn prices near record highs...

2012 Primary, Econ, Health Law, Jobs, Obama, Taxes, True Talking Points

CBO: Employers to be hit with $4 billion more in ObamaCare taxes than expected

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Washington Examiner:

Business owners will pay $4 billion more in taxes under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA)  than the Congressional Budget Office had previously expected.

“According to the updated estimates, the amount of deficit reduction from penalty payments and other effects on tax revenues under the ACA will be $5 billion more than previously estimated,” the CBO reported today. “That change primarily effects a $4 billion increase in collections from such payments by employers, a $1 billion increase in such payments by individuals, and an increase of less than $500 million in tax revenues stemming from a small reduction in employment-based coverage, which will lead to a larger share of total compensation taking the form of taxable wages and salaries and a smaller share taking the form of nontaxable health benefits.”

In short, CBO revised the Obamacare tax burden upward by $4 billion for businesses and $1 billion to $1.5 billion for individual workers.

CBO couldn’t help but bump into Chief Justice John Roberts controversial decision uphold the individual mandate as a constitutional exercise of Congress’s taxing power. The report dubs the individual mandate a “penalty tax” — that is, “a penalty paid to the Treasury by taxpayers when they file their tax returns and enforced by the Internal Revenue Service.”

2012 Primary, Econ, Health Law, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

Survey: Nearly one in 10 employers to drop health coverage…

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Just as this writer predicted long ago, since ObamaCare places taxes on care and insurance policies, and skews the market in such a way to make insurance prices skyrocket; employers would rather pay the penalty than pay for the high cost of health insurance which is already going up fast as it is phases in.

Washington Times:

About one in 10 employers plan to drop health coverage when key provisions of the new health care law kick in less than two years from now, according to a survey to be released Tuesday by the consulting company Deloitte.

Nine percent of companies said they expect to stop offering coverage to their workers in the next one to three years, the Wall Street Journal reported. Around 81 percent said they would continue providing benefits and 10 percent said they weren’t sure.

The companies, though, said a lot will depend on how future provisions of the law unfold, since most of the key parts are scheduled to take effect in 2014. One in three respondents said they could stop offering coverage if the law requires them to provide more generous benefits than they do now, if a tax on high-cost plans takes effect in 2018 as scheduled or if they decide it would be cheaper for them to pay the penalty for not providing insurance.

While small business don’t face fines for failing to offer coverage, companies with 50 or more full time employees face a penalty starting at $2,000 per worker.

Deloitte conducted the study between February and April — before the Supreme Court upheld most of the law — and surveyed corporate and human-resources executives from 560 companies currently offering benefits.

In contrast, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that around seven percent of workers could lose coverage under the law by 2019.

2012 Primary, Health Law, Lies, Obama, Taxes, True Talking Points

Do You Qualify for the New Obamacare Tax/Penalty?

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Of course, if your health insurance plan is “too good” you run into the “Cadillac Health Plan Tax”. The tax is not indexed for inflation so eventually you are taxed to hell if you do and taxed to hell if you don’t.

Via the Health Insurance Tips and Advice Blog:

Beginning January 1, 2014 the P.P.A.C.A. (a.k.a. ‘Obamacare’) legislation levies a brand new tax – the “Roberts Tax”. A tax aptly named after U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts who created this new tax all by himself. It is neither an excise tax, nor a capital gains tax or any other kind of defined tax. It is instead a new tax, a tax for doing nothing and it will be levied on nearly all Americans including small and large business owners whether they do offer health insurance to their employees or they do not.

The best way to describe this new tax is to imagine walking into a grocery store and the clerk asks if you would like to purchase a pack of gum. You politely decline the offer and are then forced by a new tax law – as defined by John Roberts – to give that clerk a tax for refusing to purchase that pack of gum. This, my fellow Americans, is how unmoored from our Constitution that our Federal Government has become.

 

2012 Primary, Budget, Clinton, Econ, Editorial, History, Obama, True Talking Points

The 1993 Clinton Tax Increases Did Not Cause an Economic Boom…

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The constant blurring of distinctions and the rewriting of history in political communications get really old.

The economy suffered after the Clinton tax increases and that is one reason why the Republican Revolution hit him in 1994 (along with gays in the military and HillaryCare which featured federal health care police with guns). Bill Clinton had campaigned on a tax cut to help get the economy growing again. He delivered just the opposite.

It is important to keep in mind that President Bush 41 went along with Democrats in increasing taxes in violation of his “read my lips no new taxes” promise. At the time Democrats praised President Bush saying “he had grown”, but when the tax increase resulted in a short 1-2 quarter recession the Democrats blasted him for reneging on his no new taxes pledge. Clinton ran against that tax increase and promised to lower them again.

But what about the Clinton economy and the surplus? Well that was in Clinton’s second term when Newt and the House Republicans balanced the budget, passed welfare reform over Clinton’s initial VETO threats and of course, the new GOP majority in Congress cut taxes.

Forbes:

The Dangerous Myth About the Clinton Tax Increase

One of the most dangerous myths that has infected the current debate over the direction of tax policy is the oft repeated claim that the tax increases under President Bill Clinton led to the boom of the 1990s.  In their Wall Street Journal Op-Ed last Friday, for example, Clinton campaign manager James Carville and Democratic pollster and Clinton advisor Stanley Greenberg write the increase in the top tax rate to 39.6% “produced the one period of shared prosperity in this past era (since 1980).”

While this myth is now a central part of liberal Democratic folklore, it is contradicted by the political disaster and poor economic results that followed the tax increase.  The real lesson of the Clinton Presidency is the way back to prosperity lies not through increased taxes on “the rich,” but through tax and regulatory reform and a return to a rules based monetary policy that produces a strong and stable dollar.

The 1993 Clinton tax increase raised the top two income tax rates to 36% and 39.6%, with the top rate hitting joint returns with incomes above $250,000 ($400,000 in 2012 dollars).  In addition, it removed the cap on the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax, raised the corporate tax rate to 35% from 34%, increased the taxable portion of Social Security benefits, and imposed a 4.3 cent per gallon increase in transportation fuel taxes.

If these tax increases were good for the middle class, then they should have been popular.  Yet, in the 1994 elections, the Democratic Party suffered historic losses. Even though Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell had declared the unpopular HillaryCare dead in September of that year, the Republican Party gained 54 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate to win control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since 1952.

Second, Messrs. Carville and Greenberg are contradicted by their former boss.  Speaking at a fund raiser in 1995, President Clinton said:  ”Probably there are people in this room still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much, too.”

During the first four years of his Presidency, real GDP growth average 3.2%, respectable relative to today’s economy, but disappointing coming as it did following just one year of recovery from the 1991 recession, the end of the Cold War and the reduction in consumer price inflation below 3% for the first time (with the single exception of 1986) since 1965.

For example, it was a half a percentage point slower than under Reagan during the four years following the first year of the recovery from the 1982 recession.

Employment growth was a respectable 2 million a year.  But real hourly wages continued to stagnate, rising only 2 cents to 7.43 an hour in 1996 from $7.41 in 1992.  No real gains for the middle class there.

However, with his masterful 1995 flip-flop on taxes, President Clinton took the first step toward a successful campaign for re-election and a shift in policy that produced the economic boom that occurred during his second term.

  • Welfare reform, which he signed in the summer of 1996, led to a massive reduction in the effective tax rates on the poor by ameliorating the rapid phase out of benefits associated with going to work.
  • The phased reduction in tariff and non-tariff barriers between the U.S., Mexico and Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement continued, leading to increased trade.
  • In 1997, Clinton signed a reduction in the (audible liberal gasp) capital gains tax rate to 20% from 28%.
  • The 1997 tax cuts also included a phased in increase in the death tax exemption to $1 million from $600,000, and established Roth IRAs and increased the limits for deductible IRAs.
  • Annual growth in federal spending was kept to below 3%, or $57 billion.
  • The Clinton Administration also maintained its policy of a strong and stable dollar.  Over his entire second term, consumer price inflation averaged only 2.4% a year.

The boom was on.  Between the end of 1996 and the end of 2000:

  • Economic growth accelerated a full percentage point to 4.2% a year.
  • Employment growth nudged higher, to 2.1 million jobs per year as the unemployment rate fell to 4.0% from 5.4%.
  • As the tax rate on capital gains came down, real wages made their biggest advance since the implementation of the Reagan tax rate reductions in the mid 1980s.  Real average hourly earnings were (in 1982 dollars) $7.43 in 1996, $7.55 in 1997, $7.75 in 1998, $7.86 in 1999, and $7.89 in 2000.
  • Millions of Americans shared in the prosperity as the value of their 401(k)s climbed along with the stock market, which saw the price of the S&P 500 index rise 78%.
  • Revenue growth accelerated an astounding 59%, increasing on average $143 billion a year.  Combined with continued restraint on government spending, that produced a $198 billion budget surplus in 2000.

Shared prosperity indeed!  But one created not by raising tax rates on high income but not yet rich middle class families, and certainly not by raising the capital gains tax rate or by imposing the equivalent of the Buffett rule, a new alternative minimum tax of 30% on incomes over $1 million, nor by massively increasing federal spending.

Rather, it was a prosperity produced by freeing America’s poor from a punitive welfare system, lowering tariffs, reducing tax rates on the creators of wealth, limiting the growth of federal government expenditures, and providing a strong and stable dollar to businesses and families in America and throughout the world.

2012 Primary, Budget, Communications Theory, Econ, History, Jobs, Reagan, Taxes, True Talking Points

Did the Bush tax cuts fail?

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Via the RSC:

Why weren’t even more jobs created during the Bush years? Because we were at full employment for 5.5 years. John Merline says “A key attack line in President Obama’s campaign stump speech these days is to claim that the country has tried Mitt Romney’s economic policies already, and they were a dismal failure. ‘The truth is,’ Obama says, ‘we tried (that) for almost a decade, and it didn’t work.’ . . .

“The month after Bush signed that 2003 law, jobs and the economy finally started growing again. From June 2003 to December 2007, the economy added 8.1 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“The unemployment rate fell to 5% from 6.3%. Real GDP growth averaged close to 3% in the four-plus years after that, and the budget deficit fell steadily from 2004 to 2007.

“What’s more, the rich ended up paying a larger chunk of the federal income tax burden after Bush’s tax cuts went into effect [This is true, I wrote about this in 2006 HERE – PoliticalArena Editor]. Obama is correct that the country has tried a combination of deregulation and tax cuts before; that took place under President Reagan.

“Reagan aggressively deregulated entire industries, while putting the brakes on new federal rules. As a result, regulatory compliance costs fell 8% during his time in office, and staffing dropped almost 7%. At the same time, Reagan’s tax cuts knocked taxes as a share of GDP down by 6%.

“The result was an almost eight-year economic boom in which real quarterly GDP growth averaged 4.3%. That’s nearly double the average growth rate Obama’s economic policies produced during the 3-year-old recovery.”

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, Obama, True Talking Points

US poverty rising to highest since 1960’s

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Some recovery… Obama and the Democrats have been running two trillion dollar deficits and economically we have so little to show for it.

Yahoo/AP News:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America’s poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest level since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

Econ, Europe, Jobs, Obama, Taxes, True Talking Points

France passes new 75% tax rate, wealthy and productive expatriate

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This is what happens when you punish success in some vein attempt at “getevenwithemism” so that the far left feels like it got it’s pound of flesh. But now those wealthy and productive will not be spending money in France, they will not have new investment in France, they will not be buying local goods and paying local taxes in France, they will not start new business in France. They passed this tax rate and they will take in less money as a result.

By the way, the same thing is happening in America – LINK.

UK Telegraph:

The latest estate agency figures have shown large numbers of France’s most well-heeled families selling up and moving to neighbouring countries.

Many are fleeing a proposed new higher tax rate of 75 per cent on all earnings over one million euros. (£780,000)

The previous top tax bracket of 41 per cent on earnings over 72,000 euros is also set to increase to 45 per cent.

Sotheby’s Realty, the estate agent arm of the British auction house, said its French offices sold more than 100 properties over 1.7 million euros between April and June this year – a marked increase on the same period in 2011.

Alexander Kraft, head of Sotheby’s Realty, France, said: “The result of the presidential election has had a real impact on our sales.

“Now a large number of wealthy French families are leaving the country as a direct result of the proposals of the new government.

2012 Primary, Econ, History, Mortgage Crisis, Obama, Pay to Play, Treason, True Talking Points

Corrupt banks still paying Democrats….

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In 2008 I wrote a long series of articles about the mortgage collapse, who engineered it, who got paid and who is lying.

Related: House Oversight Committee: Members of Congress Received Special Favors from Mortgage Lenders – LINK

Our dear friend Michelle Malkin has put out a column that takes us through memory lane on who was getting paid by the big banks, who was peddling influence, and who was engaging in a pattern of government corruption that is becoming all too familiar. And what is below is only HALF of her column as the examples are almost unending….

 

Michelle Malkin:

Your guide to sleazy Democratic Party-backed banks
Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod and his hatchet people are still yammering about GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney’s overseas investments. It’s time for the Romney campaign to educate voters about all the shady financial institutions embraced by Democrats right here on American soil.

The fat-cat narrative attacks on Republicans won’t go away by making nice with the White House — or by relying on Beltway journalists to drop their double standards and vet the president’s own bad bank entanglements. Indeed, The New York Times admitted this week that their staff and other political journalists from every major media outlet submit their work to the White House for unprecedented review, editing and “veto power.”

Fortunately, the truth manipulators and message massagers haven’t gotten to this column yet. So, let’s talk sleazy Democratic Party-backed banks, shall we?

Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac. Forget Switzerland. The mother and father of all financial industry outrages are rooted in Washington, D.C. And Obama Democrats are among the biggest winners of lavish, out-of-control compensation packages from fraud-plagued Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama confidante James Johnson raked in $21 million. Former Obama chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel “earned” at least $320,000 for a brief 14-month gig at Freddie Mac. And Clinton Fannie Mae head and Obama economic confidante Franklin Raines bagged some $90 million in pay and stock options earned during the government-sponsored institution’s Enron-style accounting scandal on the public dime.

Self-appointed banking policewoman and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz has, uncharacteristically, kept her mouth shut about these wealthy barons.

Superior Bank. One of the Obamas’ oldest Chicago friends and wealthiest billionaire bundlers, former Obama national finance chairwoman Penny Pritzker, headed up this subprime lender. Even after it went under in 2001 and left 1,400 customers destitute, Pritzker was pushing to expand its toxic subprime loan business. Pritzker and her family escaped accountability by forking over $460 million over 15 years. Obama happily accepted the nearly $800 million in campaign and inaugural funding Pritzker drummed up for him. To protect her family’s multibillion dollar fortune, Pritzker’s enterprises park their money in the very same kind of offshore trusts her candidate is attacking Romney over.

Broadway Bank. In 2010, President and Mrs. Obama personally raised money for their Chicago friend and fundraiser Alexi Giannoulias, who ran unsuccessfully for Obama’s old Illinois Senate seat. As I reported then, Giannoulias’ Greek immigrant family founded Chicago-based Broadway Bank, a now-defunct financial institution that loaned tens of millions of dollars to convicted mafia felons and faced bankruptcy after decades of engaging in risky, high-flying behavior. It’s the place where Obama parked his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign funds. And it’s the same place where a mutual friend of Obama and Giannoulias — convicted Obama fundraiser and slumlord Tony Rezko — used to bounce nearly $500,000 in bad checks written to Las Vegas casinos.

Chicago’s former inspector general blasted Giannoulias and his family for tapping $70 million worth of dividends in 2007 and 2008 as the real estate crash loomed. Broadway Bank was sitting on an estimated $250 million in bad loans. The cost to taxpayers after the bank was shut down two years ago: an estimated $390 million.

ShoreBank. The “progressive” Chicago-based community development bank, a “green” financial institution whose mission was to “create economic equity and a healthy environment,” folded in August 2010. Obama personally had endorsed the politically connected bank and appeared in a video promoting its Kenyan microlending project. But it was a doomed social justice experiment. After regulators shut it down, Obama crony companies including Bank of America and Goldman Sachs took over the mess courtesy of taxpayer subsidies.

Countrywide/Bank of America. Earlier this month, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report on corruption-plagued Countrywide Financial Corp., which was bailed out by taxpayer-bailed-out Bank of America. The House investigation confirmed the notorious favor-trading scheme, which involved sweetheart home loan deals for members of Congress and their staff, top government officials and executives of doomed mortgage giant Fannie Mae.

“These relationships helped (Countrywide CEO and Democratic subprime loan king Angelo) Mozilo increase his own company’s profits while dumping the risk of bad loans on taxpayers,” according to the new report. Mozilo copped a $67.5 million plea to avert a high-stakes public trial in the heat of the 2010 midterm election season. Since then, Obama’s Justice Department has taken no action to prosecute Countrywide officials on federal bribery charges.

Among the influence-peddling operation’s most prominent beneficiaries: the aforementioned Obama top adviser Jim Johnson, who accepted more than $7 million in below-market-rate Countrywide loans, and former Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, whose ill-fated 2010 re-election bid was personally endorsed by Obama. Obama stood by Dodd even as sordid details of his two discounted Countrywide loans and record Countrywide PAC donations mounted.

Bank of Democratic America, which raked in $45 billion in Obama-supported TARP bailout funds and billions more in secret emergency federal loans, footed the $50 million restitution payment bill for Mozilo and another Countrywide official. In 2008, BofA’s political action committee gave its biggest contributions to Obama, totaling $421,000. And as I noted in January, Bank of America supplied the Democrats with a $15 million revolving line of credit, along with an additional $17 million loan during the 2010 midterms.

Embarrassed by the party’s ties to shady Bank of America, progressives are now trying to rebrand the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, N.C., where Obama will give his nomination acceptance address. They’re referring to it as “Panthers Stadium” instead.

2012 Primary, China, Communications Theory, Jobs, Obama, Stuck on Stupid, True Talking Points

Obama invested heavily with outsourcers, after accusing Romney of doing the same…

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See our other coverage on General Electric, Obama and Outsourcing. Also see – Obama’s Top Money Man Was In Charge of Bain Capital During GST Steel Layoffs – LINK.

Here we have an outstanding piece of journalism from Phil Klein at the Washington Examiner:

President Obama has accused Mitt Romney of raking in profits from investing in companies that ship American jobs overseas, but according to his most recent financial disclosure, he and First Lady Michelle Obama have hundreds of thousands of dollars in a mutual fund that has large holdings in corporations that outsource jobs.

“(Romney) invested in companies that have been called ‘pioneers’ of outsourcing,” Obama said at a Saturday campaign event in Glen Allen, Va. “I don’t want a pioneer in outsourcing. I want some insourcing.”

But Obama’s own portfolio shows a willingness to invest in American corporations that have shifted employment overseas.

In his most recent financial disclosure from 2011, Obama and his wife reported having between $200,000 and $450,000 in the Vanguard 500 Index Fund, which invests in the largest U.S. corporations. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as of Sept. 30, 2011, the fund’s biggest holding was 8,272,039 shares of Apple Inc., then valued at $3.2 billion.

The New York Times reported in January:

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas….

“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.

“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

The mutual fund that the Obamas have invested in also held 94,582,281 million shares of General Electric, valued at $1.4 billion, as of the SEC filing. The multinational conglomorate has a long history of outsourcing – according to a new book  cited by the New York Times, in 1989, “G.E. became the first U.S. company to outsource software work to India.” Obama also has close ties to GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, who was appointed as chairman of his outside panel of economic advisers last year.

In addition to Apple and GE, the Obamas’ fund listed 10,655,961 shares of International Business Machines, valued at $1.9 billion. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2009, “The technology giant has been steadily building its work force in India and other locations while reducing the number of workers based in the U.S. Foreign workers accounted for 71% of Big Blue’s nearly 400,000 employees at the start of the year, up from about 65% in 2006.”

The point in this is not to say outsourcing is wrong. Corporations are supposed to maximize profits for shareholders. But Obama’s own portfolio shows that despite his heated rhetoric, he makes investment decisions without regard to whether companies are outsourcing.

You can look at a full list of the fund’s holdings as of Sept. 30, 2011, here.

2012 Primary, Health Law, Obama, Taxes, True Talking Points

Taxmageddon: A slew of new taxes to hit in 2013

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Heritage:

http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2012/pdf/ib3558.pdf

Starting January 1, 2013, Americans will face a $494 billion tax increase, the highest ever in one year. According to The Washington Post, congressional aides started calling it “Taxmageddon“—a chilling reference fit for an apocalyptic nightmare. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has warned that it will be a “massive fiscal cliff” for the economy.

This impending tax increase is mostly the result of the expiration of many long-standing policies that all expire at the end of 2012. President Obama and Congress should start working together now to prevent this massive tax increase rather than waiting until the end of the year. That would assure families, businesses, and investors that their taxes will not rise sharply as the economy is still staggering to its feet and show the voters that Washington really can get important things done—even in an election year.

Taxmageddon Is Huge

Taxmageddon is a $494 billion tax increase that strikes at the beginning of 2013. Under current law, tax policies in seven different categories will expire, and five of the 18 new tax hikes from Obamacare will begin.

These tax hikes will raise $494 billion in 2013 but will remain in place unless President Obama and Congress stop them. Taxpayers would see even bigger tax hikes in succeeding years as the tax increases raise more revenue as the economy grows. [And this is only a partial list folks. See the rest in the PDF link above – Political Arena Editor]

2012 Primary, Econ, Health Law, Lies, Obama, True Talking Points

Broken Promises in Obamacare. More New Taxes.

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Via the Heritage Foundation:

Yesterday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) almost called Obamacare’s individual mandate a tax, stopping mid-word to call it a “penalty”. White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew and other spokespersons echoed this talking point. This is in spite of last week’s Supreme Court ruling that deemed the mandate unconstitutional under both the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause, but ruled that it could stand as part of Congress’s authority to “lay and collect taxes.”

Dubbing the individual mandate a tax saved the President’s health care law, but it’s a concept that President Obama himself has strongly denied. In a 2009 interview, President Obama argued that his individual mandate was not a tax increase, stating, “I absolutely reject that notion.”

But after last week, President Obama must now admit it’s a tax or admit the mandate is unconstitutional. It’s can only be one or the other.

The mandate is in fact a tax, and it’s just one of many new taxes that hit the middle class in Obamacare. Lo and behold, another broken promise. President Obama claims that the mandate is holding people responsible, keeping with that spirit, here’s a reminder of the other promises the President and his health care law are responsible for breaking:

Promise #1: “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.”

Reality: The individual mandate is far from alone on Heritage’s lengthy list of Obamacare’s new taxes and penalties, many of which will heavily impact the middle class. Altogether, Obamacare’s taxes and penalties will accumulate an additional $500 billion in new revenue over a 10-year period. Yesterday, a senior economist for The Wall Street Journal revealed that 75 percent of Obamacare’s new taxes will be paid for by American families making under $120,000 a year. Among the taxes that will hit the middle class are the individual mandate, a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, a 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning, and an increase of the floor on medical deductions from 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income to 10 percent.

Promise #2: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period.”

Reality: Research continues to show that as many as 30 percent of employers will dump their employees from their existing health care coverage. The Administration itself has admitted that “as a practical matter, a majority of group health plans will lose their grandfather status by 2013.”

Promise #3: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits—either now or in the future.”

Reality: As Heritage analysts explain, “A close examination of what [the Congressional Budget Office] said, as well as other evidence, makes it clear that the deficit reduction associated with [Obamacare] is based on budget gimmicks, sleights of hand, accounting tricks, and completely implausible assumptions. A more honest accounting reveals the new law as a trillion-dollar budget buster.”

Promise #4: “I will protect Medicare.”

Reality: A Heritage Factsheet shows the various ways Obamacare ends Medicare as we know it, including severe physician reimbursement cuts that threaten seniors’ access to care and putting an unelected board of bureaucrats in charge of meeting Medicare’s new spending cap.

Promise #5: “I will sign a universal health care bill into law by the end of my first term as president that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year.”

Reality: Obamacare does not accomplish universal coverage; it leaves 26 million Americans without insurance. Moreover, Heritage research outlines 12 ways that Obamacare will increase premiums instead of reducing health care costs. Requirements that plans allow young adults to stay on their parents’ coverage and offer preventive services with no cost sharing are already leading to higher growth in premiums.

When polled, 70 percent of Americans held an unfavorable view of the individual mandate. It’s doubtful that calling it a “tax” will dramatically change their opinion. Now that Obamacare and its broken promises remain the law of the land, it’s up to the American people to see to it that the law is ultimately repealed by Congress. Then, they can move forward with real reform that puts patients’ needs first.

Quick Hits:

2012 Primary, Energy Policy, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

Political Ad: This is how Obama defines “a fair shot” (video)

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With so many of thee green energy boondoggles it looks like this: Obama gives big taxpayer money to a fund raiser who is an owner in a “green energy company”. Said owners pay themselves in a big way, give big money to Democrats and go out of business – 15th Green Energy Company Funded By Obama Goes Under (video).

History, Mortgage Crisis, Obama, Pay to Play, True Talking Points

House Oversight Committee: Members of Congress Received Special Favors from Mortgage Lenders

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Including the Democrat Chair of the Senate Banking Committee Chris Dodd who was in a position to block mortgage reform legislation, either in Committee or through filibuster and so he did. Republican Senators and the Bush Administration tried repeatedly since 2001 to get such legislation passed Chris Dodd and were unable to do so.

Here’s a quote from the House Oversight Committee’s staff report on Countrywide Mortgage influence-peddling:

http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Countrywide-112th-Report-7.3.12-1207-PM.pdf

“Considering the cost to taxpayers of the failure to reform the GSEs, Congress should consider legislation prohibiting companies from offering discounts and other forms of preferential treatment to Members of Congress and congressional staff. In addition to mortgage lenders like Countrywide, such legislation should cover banks, auto dealerships, jewelry stores, and any other company that offers financing to customers.To foreclose the possibility that a lender might apply a discount to a loan without their knowledge, Members of Congress and congressional staff should consider notifying all parties to complex financial transactions that they must not receive discounts due to congressional ethics rules, as Congressman Sessions did.”

2012 Primary, Communications Theory, Econ, Obama, True Talking Points

Devastating new ad: Obama’s “war on women” (video)

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When there is a war on wealth and growth and on small business as this administration has engaged in, only the “most employable” keep their jobs. Women who take time off for babies and such become expendable in such an economy. By the way, the statistics in the ad are directly from the Obama Administration.

Our pals Michelle Fields and Sandra Smith respond:

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, Europe, Obama

Spain raises national sales tax to 21%

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Spain now has a 21% national sales tax. This is what happens when socialist governments spend like crazy.

It is worse, in Spain their sales tax is in the form of a value added tax. This means that the tax is applied at every stage of production – The sugar, the flour, the water, the making of the dough, the baking, the packaging and finally the selling. That adds up to one expensive loaf of bread. This is who elite Democrats and academics say we should emulate.

CNBC:

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced a swathe of new taxes and spending cuts on Wednesday designed to slash 65 billion euros from the budget deficit by 2014 as recession-plagued Spain struggles to meet tough targets agreed with Europe.

Rajoy, of the center-right People’s Party, proposed a 3-point hike in the main rate of Value Added Tax on goods and services to 21 percent, and outlined cuts in unemployment benefit and civil service pay and perks in a parliamentary speech interrupted by jeers and boos from the opposition.

“These measures are not pleasant, but they are necessary. Our public spending exceeds our income by tens of billions of euros,” Rajoy told parliament.

He also announced new indirect taxes on energy, plans to privatize ports, airports and rail assets, and a reversal of property tax breaks that his party had restored last December.

2012 Primary, Budget, Econ, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

Gov. Sununu destroys Andrea Mitchell while she struggles to defend Obama’s stimulus outsourcing (video)

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We all knew that NBC was in the tank, but wow this is a sight to see. This interview was so factually lopsided he just ends laughing at her.

At the end, what Sununu says about small business is true. Most small businesses exist as labors of love that don’t make profits and/or just exist on paper. The small percentage of small businesses that actually have employees do 70% of the hiring in this country.

As far as outsourcing, Bain was able to help almost 80% of the companies it invested in and only a small number of them engaged in heavy outsourcing. NBC and the Democrat media complex thinks that the American people will be more interested in what Mitt Romney does with his own money, than what Barack Obama does with yours. Some estimates show that $29 BILLION of your “Obama” stimulus dollars went overseas almost directly. That dwarfs anything that Mitt Romney did with his money or Bain’s.

The RNC has a website called Obamanamics Outsourced that lists how many jobs Obama outsourced to other countries using your tax dollars.

 

President Obama said that stimulus jobs could not be outsourced but…

2012 Primary, Econ, Elite Media, Obama, Taxes, True Talking Points

CNN: Obama’s tax plan today will cut GDP growth in half (video)

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CNN has been at the bottom of the ratings heap for some time. Maybe their new angle is to actually do good journalism and that would be a welcome change. Will it last? I wouldn’t bet on it, but I hope I am wrong.

Of course the majority of the $250K+ who pay the top marginal tax rate are not “people” at all, they are small to medium sized S-Corps (small businesses).

2012 Primary, Econ, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

16.8% of millenials are unemployed or have given up looking for work

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Via our pal Michelle Fields at The Daily Caller:

New jobs numbers for June released Friday show that Americans 18-29 years old continue to suffer under the Obama administration with a 12.8% unemployment rate.

The jobs report shows that there are now 1.735 million young Americans who are no longer counted as “employed” because they have given up looking for a job and have left the labor force all together.

Generation Opportunity — a conservative non-profit focused on young Americans — notes that if “the labor force participation rate were factored into the overall 18-29 youth unemployment calculation, the actual 18-29-unemployment rate would rise to 16.8 percent.”

2012 Primary, Econ, Rick Perry, True Talking Points

CNBC: Best place to do business and create jobs is Texas

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Will the Democrats send Rick Perry congratulations?

CNBC:

#1 – Texas

We scored all 50 states on 43 measures of competitiveness developed with input from business groups including the National Association of Manufacturers and the Council on Competitiveness. States received points based on their rankings in each metric. Then, we separated those metrics into ten broad categories, weighting the categories based on how frequently they are cited in state economic development marketing materials. That way, our study ranks the states based on the criteria they use to sell themselves.

Here are the ten categories ranked in our study:

2012 Primary, Gangsta Govt, Thugs, True Talking Points

Democrat staffers recording Republicans at their homes, while grocery shopping etc…

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The reason for this is clear, to pressure families of those considering running as Republicans to decide against it. What the elite media did to Sarah Palin and her children is the main reason why Indiana Governor Mitch Daniel’s family forbade him from running for higher office.

Politico:

While most serious campaigns on both sides use campaign trackers — staffers whose job is to record on video every public appearance and statement by an opponent — House Democrats are taking it to another level. They’re now recording video of the homes of GOP congressmen and candidates and posting the raw footage on the Internet for all to see.

That ratcheting up of the video surveillance game is unnerving Republicans who insist that even by political standards, it’s a gross invasion of privacy. Worse, they say, it creates a safety risk for members of Congress and their families at a time when they are already on edge after a deranged gunman shot former Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords 18 months ago.

Wisconsin GOP Rep. Reid Ribble, who said he’s also been followed by a cameraman when shopping for groceries, said the home videos cross a line.

“I feel it’s totally inappropriate,” said Ribble, a freshman facing a competitive race for reelection. “It was disturbing to me that they would put that online. I don’t understand any political benefit that can be achieved with that.”

In Ribble’s case, a clip of his northeastern Wisconsin home appeared online June 18. The soundless video — which lasts 38 seconds — is taken from a car sitting just outside the house. The shot pans across the large home, showing it from several different angles.

DeaNa Ribble, the congressman’s wife, said it is deeply unsettling.

“I’m more creeped out about this than Reid is, just because I’m home more,” she said. “If they so much as put a foot on private property, I will be the first person to call the police.”

2012 Primary, Civility, Health Law, Obama, Rick Perry, True Talking Points

Governor Rick Perry tells Chief Obamacare Bureaucrat where to put ObamaCare…

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If you didn’t vote for Rick Perry you may wish you had after reading his awesome letter to ObamaCare Chief Bureaucrat Kathleen Sebelius. Get ready to start cheering and enjoy the letter below!

Texas Governor Rick Perry
Texas Governor Rick Perry

http://governor.state.tx.us/files/press-office/O-SebeliusKathleen201207090024.pdf

2012 Primary, Econ, Jobs, Obama, True Talking Points

Unemployment dropped in every state the elected a Republican Governor in 2010

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Via Breitbart News and Examiner.com:

In 2010, influenced by the Tea Party and its focus on fiscal issues, 17 states elected Republican governors. And, according to an Examiner.com analysis, every one of those states saw a drop in their unemployment rates since January of 2011. Furthermore, the average drop in the unemployment rate in these states was 1.35%, compared to the national decline of .9%, which means, according to the analysis, that the job market in these Republican states is improving 50% faster than the national rate.

Since January of 2011, here is how much the unemployment rate declined in each of the 17 states that elected Republican governors in 2010, according to the Examiner:

Kansas – 6.9% to 6.1% = a decline of 0.8%

Maine – 8.0% to 7.4% = a decline of 0.6%

Michigan – 10.9% to 8.5% = a decline of 2.4%

New Mexico – 7.7% to 6.7% = a decline of 1.0%

Oklahoma – 6.2% to 4.8% = a decline of 1.4%

Pennsylvania – 8.0% to 7.4% = a decline of 0.6%

Tennessee – 9.5% to 7.9% = a decline of 1.6%

Wisconsin – 7.7% to 6.8% = a decline of 0.9%

Wyoming – 6.3% to 5.2% = a decline of 1.1%

Alabama – 9.3% to 7.4% = a decline of 1.9%

Georgia – 10.1% to 8.9% = a decline of 1.2%

South Carolina – 10.6% to 9.1% = a decline of 1.5%

South Dakota – 5.0% to 4.3% = a decline of 0.7%

Florida – 10.9% to 8.6% = a decline of 2.3%

Nevada – 13.8% to 11.6% = a decline of 2.2%

Iowa – 6.1% to 5.1% = a decline of 1.0%

Ohio – 9.0% to 7.3% = a decline of 1.7%

On the other hand, the unemployment rate in states that elected Democrats in 2010 dropped, on average, as much as the national rate decline and, in some states such as New York, the unemployment rate has risen since January of 2011.

2012 Primary, Culture War, Econ, Obama, Taxes, True Talking Points

Americans Making Over $50,000 a Year Paid 93.3 % of All Taxes in 2010

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Always keep in mind the difference between the productive middle class, the rich and the super rich – LINK – LINK – LINK – LINK. The Democrat leadership makes like there is no difference for reasons you will discover in that list of links.

CNS News:

Americans making over $50,000 paid most of the federal taxes that were paid in the U.S. in 2010.

According to statistics compiled from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) by the Tax Foundation, those people making above $50,000 had an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent, and carried 93.3 percent of the total tax burden.

In contrast, Americans making less than $50,000 had an effective tax rate of 3.5 percent and their total share of the tax burden was just 6.7 percent.

Americans making more than $250,000 had an effective tax rate of 23.4 percent and their total share of the tax burden was 45.7 percent.

Out of the 143 million tax returns that were filed with the IRS in 2010, 58 million – or 41 percent – of those filers were non-payers.

In other words, only 85 million actually paid taxes.

But Tax Foundation data also shows that people who didn’t pay any income tax received $105 billion in refundable tax credits from the IRS.

Additionally, statistics from the Tax Foundation shows that the federal tax code is 3.8 million words long – 3.5 times longer than all seven books of J.K. Rowling’s famous Harry Potter series combined.

According to Scholastic.com, the total word count of all seven Harry Potter books is 1,083,594 words with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone being the shortest (76,944 words) and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix the longest (257,045).

In contrast, the federal tax code is 3.8 million words, almost a tripling of its size since 2001 when the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the tax code to be 1,395,000, and almost doubling its size since the Tax Foundation’s estimates in 2001.

2012 Primary, Gangsta Govt, Health Law, Obama, True Talking Points

ObamaCare creates 13,000 pages of new regulations and they aren’t done yet…

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And some people are still foolish enough to believe that adding such a bureaucratic overhead will eventually lower healthcare costs and premiums, of course the CBO and the Medicare Actuary have already said that ObamaCare makes the problem worse.

Jim Angle:

With the Supreme Court giving President Obama’s new health care law a green light, federal and state officials are turning to implementation of the law — a lengthy and massive undertaking still in its early stages, but already costing money and expanding the government.

The Health and Human Services Department “was given a billion dollars implementation money,” Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg of Montana said. “That money is gone already on additional bureaucrats and IT programs, computerization for the implementation.”

“Oh boy,” Stan Dorn of the Urban Institute said. “HHS has a huge amount of work to do and the states do, too. There will be new health insurance marketplaces in every state in the country, places you can go online, compare health plans.”

The IRS, Health and Human Services and many other agencies will now write thousands of pages of regulations — an effort well under way:

“There’s already 13,000 pages of regulations, and they’re not even done yet,” Rehberg said.

“It’s a delegation of extensive authority from Congress to the Department of Health and Human Services and a lot of boards and commissions and bureaus throughout the bureaucracy,” Matt Spalding of the Heritage Foundation said. “We counted about 180 or so.”

There has been much focus on the mandate that all Americans obtain health insurance, but analysts say that’s just a small part of the law — covering only a few pages out of the law’s 2700.

“The fact of the matter is the mandate is about two percent of the whole piece of the legislation,” Spalding said. “It’s a minor part.”

Much bigger than the mandate itself are the insurance exchanges that will administer $681 billion in subsidies over 10 years, which will require a lot of new federal workers at the IRS and health department.

“They are asking for several hundred new employees,” Dorn said. “You have rules you need to write and you need lawyers, so there are lots of things you need to do when you are standing up a new enterprise.”

For some, though, the bottom line is clear and troubling: The federal government is about to assume massive new powers.

According to James Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, federal powers will include designing insurance plans, telling people where they can go for coverage and how much insurers are allowed to charge.

“Really, how doctors and hospitals are supposed to practice medicine,” he said.

Read more HERE.

 

2012 Primary, Elite Media, Health Law, Obama, SCOTUS, Treason, True Talking Points

MUST SEE: ObamaCare’s Impact on YOU (video)

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You know that the elite media in the United States has failed us when Russia Today (AKA “RT”) – the mouthpiece for Vladimir Putin – gives the best analysis I have yet seen on a major network (granted RT isn’t huge in the United States, but around the world it is). Russia Today not only explains why the Roberts ruling is preposterous as a matter of law, and then explains several of the economic consequences of ObamaCare. This very writer has called out Russia Today as a mouthpiece for Putin before, but with that said, in this segment Russia Today displays one of the finest pieces of television journalism I have ever seen.

Russia Today has an agenda of showing the United States as authoritarian, silly, corrupt, willing to break its own laws, and anything but small government. Russia Today doesn’t have to make it up any more with the Obama Administration because all they have to do is highlight and accurately cover the stories the elite media will not to accomplish Putin’s goals.

Our friend Samantha Frederickson has a GREAT post explaining the consequences of ObamaCare that will impact you after the clip from Russia Today below. Start the video at the 2:00 mark:

Now consider this — the PPACA sets forth a “fine” (tax) of $2,000 per employee for a business that has 50 or more and does not provide “at least” the minimum “insurance” to all.

There is no health care plan I’m aware of that a business can buy today that costs less than $2,000 per employee per year, and which also meets the requirements in the law.  None.  That was almost impossible to meet back in 1995 for a healthy, 18 year old insured single male.  It’s flatly impossible now and it’s doubly-so if your workforce has other than 18-year old single, healthy males in it.  I know this to be factual because I was responsible for buying it for our employees as a CEO of a company.

Therefore the incentive is for all businesses to drop health care.

Period.

Second, your choice is to either (1) buy and have said plan (whether through employment or individually) or pay a “fine” (tax) of 1% of income (increasing to 2.5% of AGI in 2016.)  The minimum “fine” is $95 starting in 2013, rising to $695 in 2016.  The average family income is about $50,000/year, which means that the fine (tax) will be $1,250 in 2016.  It’s less now.

You cannot buy health insurance at their “minimum level” for anything approaching $1,250 a year no matter how healthy you are at any age. 

The law prohibits insurance companies from charging you more if you’re sick, or refusing to cover you at all.  They must accept everyone on equal terms.

Therefore:

  • Businesses will drop coverage; it’s cheaper (by far) for them to pay the fine and, for those under 133% of the federal poverty level, those employees can go onto Medicaid.  This is a “family of four” income of $31,900 (as of today; it will go up of course.)  That’s roughly the second quintile.
  • Individuals will drop coverage and pay the fine, since it’s far cheaper than to buy the “insurance.”

Both will buy the “insurance” only when they get sick, since they cannot be upcharged.

The cost of “insurance” will thus skyrocket to 10x or more what it costs now, just as it would if you bought auto insurance only after you wrecked or homeowners insurance only after you had a fire.

At the higher price nobody will be able to afford to buy the insurance at all, since that will be indistinguishable from just paying for whatever is wrong with you, plus the insurance company markup.

In very short order the entire medical system and health insurance scheme will collapse, leaving only two choices — either a return to free market principles (including all I’ve argued for since this debate began) or a single-payer, fully-socialized system ala Canada.

You can bet the government will continue to try to change the terms of the deal — including ramping up the tax/fine and other games, to prevent this outcome, but they will fail.

Now the question becomes this:

Which Presidential political candidates have told you the above, and what are their answers to this dilemma?

Let’s go down the list.

  • We know what Obama’s is — he passed it.  You will lose your private health care under Obama.  Period.  We are headed for a fully-socialized medical system and a collapse of the current medical paradigm under Obama.
  • We know what Gary Johnson’s position is — he wants to “block grant” all Medicare and Medicaid to the states, cut the amount of money in the budget (all line items) 43% and repeal Obamacare (including the mandate.)  But he refuses to demand an end to the cost-shifting where Juanita the illegal Mexican immigrant who is 7-1/2 months pregnant while drug and alcohol dependent shows up in the hospital, in labor, and foists off a $2.5 million NICU and birth expense bill on you!  He also refuses to stop the drug companies from effectively forcing Americans to bear the cost of all drug and device development and he has refused to put a stop to differential billing.  The latter two only exist because of explicit federal laws that make lawful in the health industry market behaviors that are illegal in virtually every other line of work (see The Sherman Act, The Clayton Act, and Robinson-Patman for starters.)  All of these facts are why the costs are ramping in the first place, which means his plan will simply force the States into bankruptcy and continue screwing you at the same time.
  • We don’t know what Romney’s plan is in detail.  He’s been oddly silent in that regard.  He says “Obamacare is not the answer” but he passed it as Governor on a state basis!  He too advocates nothing to put a stop to the cost-shifting and anti-competitive acts of drug and device makers nor hospitals and other medical providers.  He too wants to block grant Medicaid but that does nothing to address the problem and will simply bankrupt the state budgets (as noted for Johnson.)   Conspicuously absent from Romney’s plan (as is true for Johnson) is (1) a repeal of EMTALA, (2) a demand for level, consistent pricing irrespective of how one pays for a service (3) and a demand to remove anti-competitive laws protecting differential billing across state and national boundaries (e.g. Viagra for $2 in Canada .vs. $20 here) so that Americans are not forced to subsdize everyone else in the world and you pay the same price as the guy next to you in the hospital for the same product or service, instead of 2x, 3x, 5x, or even 100x as much.

So we have three Presidential candidates, none of which will do a damn thing to fix what’s wrong with health care.  All three are promoting a path that will bankrupt the States, bankrupt the Federal Government, bankrupt you or all three.

All three are promoting mathematical impossibilities.  All three are protecting monopolistic behavior and refusing to address specific laws that were passed to protect that behavior and special government-granted privilege; without those protections that monopolistic behavior would immediately collapse.

And worse, none of them has proposed a damn thing to deal with what the Supreme Court just did, which is grant a permanent ability to the Federal Government to compel any behavior by linking it to a tax.  Some examples of where this can (and might in the near future!) go include:

  • You make cars.  You’re told to sell a car to anyone who makes under $25,000 a year for $5,000.  This is of course under your cost of production.  If you refuse, every car you make is subject to a $5,000 tax.  This is now Constitutional, as of this last week.
  • You would like to have three kids.  The government decides that you may have only two.  If you have get pregnant with a third and refuse to have an abortion you must pay $10,000 a year in additional tax forever.  This is now Constitutional, as of last week.
  • You may have all the abortions you want, but each costs $10,000 in tax.  This is Constitutional, as of last week.
  • You must eat Broccoli and submit receipts with your 1040 proving you bought 1lb of Broccoli per person in your household per week.  If you do not, you must pay $5,000 in additional tax.  This is Constitutional, as of last week.
  • If you are more than 10lbs overweight you must pay $2,000 of additional tax for every 10lbs overweight you are, with no cap.  This is Constitutional, as of last week.

You probably think I’m kidding on this.  I’m not.  This is what the Roberts Court held.  There is literally nothing that Congress cannot mandate that you do, or not do, under penalty of paying a tax.  All that was unconstitutional before the ruling now is explicitly constitutional if the only “compulsion” to do (or not do) a given thing is that you will be taxed if you refuse.  The court promised to review “reasonableness” of any such taxes in the future, but note that at the same time the court ignored two other problems with the Health Care law, making a lie of their claim of “future reasonableness” tests right up front:

  • Direct taxes are unconstitutional without being apportioned.  This is clearly a direct tax and it is not apportioned.  It is therefore unconstitutional, but the USSC simply ignored this. (The 16th Amendment was required to make income taxes constitutional for this reason.)
  • The Anti-Injunction Act prohibits suing the government over a tax until you have actually paid it.  This means that if the PPACA “penalty” is a tax then the entire lawsuit that went to the USSC is moot as it’s not yet “ripe” (since nobody has yet paid the tax.)  If they were going to find that this was a tax they were thus bound to dismiss the entire complaint as unripe.  They ignored that too.

In short the USSC has become no more legitimate than the North Korean government and is unworthy of your respect.

2012 Primary, Econ, Health Law, Obama, Taxes, True Talking Points

John Kartch: Five major ObamaCare taxes that will impact you in 2013

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There are 21 new taxes in ObamaCare several of which target the chronically ill and disabled – LINK – LINK – LINK.

:

Six months from now, in January 2013, five major ObamaCare taxes will come into force:

1. The ObamaCare Medical Device Manufacturing Tax

This 2.3 percent tax on medical device makers will raise the price of (for example) every pacemaker, prosthetic limb, stent, and operating table. Can you remind us, Mr. President, how taxing medical devices will reduce the cost of health care? The tax is particularly destructive because it is levied on gross sales and even targets companies who haven’t turned a profit yet.

These are often small, scrappy companies with less than 20 employees who pioneer the next generation of life-prolonging devices. In addition to raising the cost of health care, this $20 billion tax over the next ten years will not help the country’s jobs outlook, as the industry employs nearly 400,000 Americans. Several companies have already responded to the looming tax by cutting research and development budgets and laying off workers.

2. The ObamaCare High Medical Bills Tax

This onerous tax provision will hit Americans facing the highest out-of-pocket medical bills. Currently, Americans are allowed to deduct medical expenses on their 1040 form to the extent the costs exceed 7.5 percent of one’s adjusted gross income.

The new ObamaCare provision will raise that threshold to 10 percent, subjecting patients to a higher tax bill. This tax will hit pre-retirement seniors the hardest. Over the next ten years, affected Americans will pony up a minimum total of $15 billion in taxes thanks to this provision.

3. The ObamaCare Flexible Spending Account Cap 

The 24 million Americans who have Flexible Spending Accounts will face a new federally imposed $2,500 annual cap. These pre-tax accounts, which currently have no federal limit, are used to purchase everything from contact lenses to children’s braces. With the cost of braces being as high as $7,200, this tax provision will play an unwelcome role in everyday kitchen-table health care decisions.

The cap will also affect families with special-needs children, whose tuition can be covered using FSA funds. Special-needs tuition can cost up to $14,000 per child per year. This cruel tax provision will limit the options available to such families, all so that the federal government can squeeze an additional $13 billion out of taxpayer pockets over the next ten years.

The targeting of FSAs by President Obama and congressional Democrats is no accident. The progressive left has never been fond of the consumer-driven accounts, which serve as a small roadblock in their long-term drive for a one-size-fits-all government health care bureaucracy.

For further proof, note the ObamaCare “medicine cabinet tax” which since 2011 has barred the 13.5 million Americans with Health Savings Accounts from purchasing over-the-counter medicines with pre-tax funds.

4. The ObamaCare Surtax on Investment Income

Under current law, the capital gains tax rate for all Americans rises from 15 to 20 percent in 2013, while the top dividend rate rises from 15 to 39.6 percent. The new ObamaCare surtax takes the top capital gains rate to 23.8 percent and top dividend rate to 43.4 percent. The tax will take a minimum of $123 billion out of taxpayer pockets over the next ten years.

And, last but not least…

5. The ObamaCare Medicare Payroll Tax increase

This tax soaks employers to the tune of $86 billion over the next ten years.

As you can understand, there is a reason why the authors of ObamaCare wrote the law in such a way that the most brutal tax increases take effect conveniently after the 2012 election.  It’s the same reason President Obama, congressional Democrats, and the mainstream media conveniently neglect to mention these taxes and prefer that you simply “move on” after the Supreme Court ruling.

2012 Primary, Budget, Health Law, Lies, Obama, SCOTUS, True Talking Points

Megyn Kelly Calls Out Obama: Your lawyer called it a tax in court and now your campaign people are lying about it (video)

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Obama and the Democrat Party leadership after saying it was not a tax, directed their lawyers in court to argue that it is a legal tax and now the Obama campaign is saying that they never said it was a tax and that the SDupreme Court got it wrong when they agreed wih the argument form Obama’s own lawyer.

[Actually there are 21 new taxes in ObamaCare several of which target the chronically ill and disabled – LINK – LINK – LINK – Editor]