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POPSObama's Fair Tax Mr. Warren, a man of the cloth, has done us a great service by asking the candidates to answer a pretty secular question: What kind of income makes an American "rich"? Maybe in the more secular setting of an upcoming debate, one of our nonpastor moderators could ask the candidates the moral question: What specific rate of individual taxation would it take for the rich to be paying their fair share?
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POPSPity the Poor Corporations So, OK, German profits taxes look low, but basically the United States looks normal. This whole fuss is much ado about nothing — or rather, it’s about the ability of special interests to create a firestorm of publicity over the alleged need to do something that, whaddya know, would improve their bottom line.
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POPSU.S. Military Hoped for Virtually Unlimited Freedom of Action in Iraq This was reported in June... According to Cockburn's reporting, "President Bush wants to push through by the end of so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated." (Note 13) A prime beneficiary of the acceptance of a military agreement that the Iraqi people do not believe respects their rights or serves their interests would probably be the vast, privatized U.S. military/intelligence complex, positioned to profit from repressing the resistance sure to follow. If the Bush administration's goal is achieved through secret deals and pressure tactics it would only confirm the widespread view that its commitment to democracy is primarily self-serving. In Iraq as elsewhere there are many who would welcome a genuine American commitment to liberty and human rights but believe that U.S. actions contradict its rhetoric. So much to decipher here!
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POPSTaxation: Our Rulers Carnival Of Theft And Plunder But there is a case to be made for a kind of windfall profits tax: A tax on windfall political profits is indeed desirable. Our rulers cannot legally take home personally more than a minor share (in salary and perks) of the income they steal from us through taxation. But they "profit" from taxes nevertheless by using billions and billions of dollars to buy votes from various political constituencies in order to perpetuate their political careers. Then, in many cases, after spending years in Congress giving away our hard-earned dollars to various undeserving individuals and groups, they retire to earn large salaries from those very groups or to become lobbyists for the groups and use their political connections to keep this carnival of theft and plunder going. That is how our rulers profit personally from tax revenue.
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POPSHYPERINFLATION (read, watch, learn) In late 1923, Germany undertook a monetary reform creating a new unit of currency called the rentenmark. The German government promised that the new currency could be converted on demand into a bond having a certain value in gold. Proponents of the standard answer argue that the guarantee of convertibility is properly viewed as a promise to cease the rapid issue of money. An alternative view held by some economists is that not just monetary reform, but also fiscal reform, is needed to end a hyperinflation. According to this view a successful reform entails two believable commitments on the part of government. The first is a commitment to halt the rapid growth of paper money. The second is a commitment to bring the government's budget into balance. This second commitment is necessary for a successful reform because it removes, or at least lessens, the incentive for the government to resort to inflationary taxation.
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POPSOlbama's Tax Plan Designed To Appeal To Class Envy
That $40 billion tax hike alone is twice as much as all the federal taxes paid by the 39 million Americans in the bottom quintile. We're sure that Obama's camp would address our concerns by pointing out that raising the tax bill for the top 1% eases the tax burden on the rest of America. But that's a superficial rationalization designed to appeal to class envy. First, increasing the burden on the top taxpayers will not make the poor rich, but instead make the rich poorer. There will be 131 billion fewer dollars in the private sector for investments that create businesses and jobs. Second, squeezing the federal tax burden onto an ever smaller group is not smart. The Marxist appetite for radically progressive taxation is both unfair and dangerous. Third, the large majority that pays little or no taxes will make excessive demands on the small group that is saddled with the burden because the non- and low-paying group is insulated from the pain.
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POPSObama Pro Quo Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., who also chairs a subcommittee that oversees taxation and IRS oversight, had to donate $10,700 in loan savings from Countrywide when his deal came to light. Obama's veep vetter James Johnson quit after his Countrywide arrangement became known. Yet another Democrat's sweetheart mortgage deal is exposed — and this time it's the party's standard bearer. What could Sen. Barack Obama do for a lender in exchange for more than $100,000? Plenty. If Obama is animated by high ideals for the future, why are we finding so many lowdown deals in his past?
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POPSKing John Gave His Consent To The Magna Carta 15 June 1215 Magna Charta, is the thirteenth-century document regarded as the foundation of English constitutional liberty. By early spring of 1215, England was in the throes of a civil war. King John's blundering foreign policy had disrupted the Angevin Empire and had alienated a considerable number of his former followers. More significant were his repeated violations of feudal and common law. These abuses caused most of John's barons to revolt. Between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Magna Carta was largely forgotten. The civil conflicts attending the War of the Roses and the strong arm of the Tudors blotted out the memory of the Magna Carta. Contemporary literature of the Tudor period (1485–1603) is strangely silent about the charter, and William Shakespeare in King John made no reference to what probably was the most important event in the life of that monarch. Had the great dramatist known of the charter, he would hardly have passed over so significant an episode.
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POPSYou Can't Soak The Rich "Like science, economics advances as verifiable patterns are recognized and codified. But economics is in a far earlier stage of evolution than physics. Unfortunately, it is often poisoned by political wishful thinking, just as medieval science was poisoned by religious doctrine. Taxation is an important example. "The interactions among the myriad participants in a tax system are as impossible to unravel as are those of the molecules in a gas, and the effects of tax policies are speculative and highly contentious. Will increasing tax rates on the rich increase revenues, or hold back the economy, as John McCain fears?
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POPSThomas Jefferson's Warning "As this power passes from each individual to a central governing power, individual freedom and liberty is snuffed out, replaced with an arbitrary economic equality as defined, confiscated via progressive taxation and redistributed by those who seek the political power to rule over the lives of others." Serfdom
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POPSBIOFUELS – A MAN MADE DISASTER BIOFUEL DISASTER_THANK CONGRESS AND GREENIES! Contrary to popular belief, the production of biofuels is extremely unfriendly to the environment. The increased use of fertilizer needed in the growing corn crop has resulted in additional soil and water pollution. The National Academy of Sciences recently reported that the 15% food to fuel mandate will increase the size of the Gulf of Mexico dead zone by 10 to 19% as a result of water pollution caused by fertilizer runoff. The production of ethanol requires copious amounts of water, thereby draining local water tables. Congress never learns. Manipulating the market with subsidies and taxation can have disastrous, deadly results. If ethanol is such a great product, then it will thrive in the free market. How many people will have to starve before Congress and the do-gooder environmentalist lobby admit that our biofuel policy is a complete disaster and a potential threat to our economy and global stability.
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POPSSupport The Cell-Phone Tax Fairness Act Say NO to New Discriminatory State and Local Wireless Taxes and Fees - FOR 5 YEARS!! YOU CAN HELP TODAY by encouraging your U.S. Representative and your Senators in Washington to support and co-sponsor the "Cell Tax Fairness Act of 2008," recently introduced legislation that will freeze all new discriminatory state and local wireless taxes for five years. Tell your friends, and contact your lawmakers today. http://www.mywireless.org/celltaxletter/
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POPSBush Raises Temp On Global Warming Granted, President Bush doesn't intend for his simple decision to offer legislation to regulate carbon emissions to have such catastrophic consequences. But then, by this point, he should be quite familiar with the concept of unintended consequences. And he needs to recognize that he cannot pass "sensible" legislation. (I have serious doubts that any legislation on this topic could be sensible.) All he can do is set the stage for next year's legislation by giving away the rhetorical store and weakening the already modest backbone of Republican legislators. The liberal world order will not let go of their global warming assault on free economies until hell freezes over -- by which point, obviously, the global warming theory will be visibly disproved.
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POPSJustice for Ugly People "In Britain, of course, we would have less of a political hurdle to overcome, as our sturdy leader has been bred for stomping around the grounds of a manse in Kirkcaldy rather than insinuating himself round the luscious forms of sultry tango dancers."
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POPSHarry Reid says: federal income taxes "voluntary" Well, I actually agree with Reid in principle. However, just you try to not pay your income taxes. The Federal Income Tax is actually unconstitutional regarding the Governments authority top force you to pay. The Supreme court has decided many times that wages from employment do not meet the definition of "income" as it applies to individual taxes.
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POPSTax Dollars Supporting Countries That Undermine American Ideals And Interests Use the form to e-mail President Bush, demanding that American aid dollars be for countries committed to upholding our democratic and free-market ideals. In addition, the US Trade and Development Agency has recently authorized nearly $400,000 of for a study on a proposed rail line between a coal mine in Southern Mongolia and the railroad. In other words, taxpayer-funded foreign aid to Mongolia is being used to undermine American ideals and interests, and embolden anti-freedom elites not only in Mongolia, but in Moscow as well. Why is Mongolia flouting Western interests and ideals despite our nation’s generosity, you ask? Simply put, the Russians and a few elite Mongolians would benefit if Western firms were forced to stop doing business in Mongolia and the region. This is an outrage that must not go unchecked
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