Here is my State of the Union Mr. President

A couple of weeks ago our President delivered the State of the Union address.  Early this week while reading over the Wall Street Journal, I realized the country portrayed in a number of articles is drastically different than the rosy picture painter by President Obama. After listening to the Presidents speech you would think the only thing left to do is get marriage for gay people and shorten up some lines at the voting booths.

A quick glance across the front section of the Wall Street Journal gives us an indication that the state of the union might still be lacking in some areas.

The lead article above the fold it titled “Payroll Tax Whacks Spending”. This article goes on to talk about how major retail stores and restaurants were lowering sales expectations as $110 billion dollars is transferred out of consumers hands to the federal government in the form of a 2% increase in payroll tax.  With consumer confidence shaken by a total lack of leadership in Washington, I think consumer spending will remain low for some time.

A page three article talks about how drivers are feeling the pinch of still high gas prices. With the national average hitting $3.78 a gallon, it is not hard to see how having the price of gas more than double in the last four years is hurting consumers.  Sure, it would be nice to go back to the $1.60 a gallon prices from before Obama took office and the democrats would like us to blame the big bad oil companies. But let’s not forget - that the single largest component in the price of gasoline is - - taxes. Taxes account for 48 cents of every gallon here in North Carolina where I live.

Almost the complete forth page is dedicated to the sequester and the potential fallout from it. Democrats are predicting a total break-down in life as we know it if 44 billion dollars of cuts to federal spending are allowed to go through. If the federal government cannot afford to absorb $44 billion in cuts over the next 10 months there is no hope. How will the government ever close the one trillion dollars a year in deficit spending if $ 44 billion will lead to a total break down on schools, police, air travel and boarder protection? The President and leading democrats warn that only higher taxes on the wealthy (on top the $ 600 billion dollars of higher taxes already agreed on by Republicans) can save us from anarchy. $ 3.8 trillion dollars of spending every year, and still not enough we are told.

Meanwhile the US State Department is, for about the 500th time, trying to “restart” talks about changing their nuclear program with Iran. I have the feeling if we were not successful the first 499 times this effort will not accomplish anything, well except buy a little more time for Iran to perfect its weapons.  Bill Clinton negotiated with North Korea while they completed their atomic bomb, he is still a hero of the left and maybe Obama is just following his lead.

Amazingly on the same page is a short article detailing plans by NATO to keep at least 350,000 troops in Afghanistan until at least 2015 with 225,000 being almost permanently deployed after 2017. During his State of the Union address the President said that the war ends in 2014.  But you can bet the bulk of any NATO force will be Americans.

One page further and we find a piece written by the co-founder of the Home Depot stores that discusses a recent Supreme Court case. The court found that three members of the National Labor Relations Board were unlawfully appointed by President Obama. The court found that the President could not use a recess appointment when the Senate said it was still in session.  By law the board must have a quorum to conduct any business so any decisions handed down by the board while the illegal appointees severed were not valid. The really important part of the story is the chairman of the board, Mark Pearce, disagreed with the court and was going to continue business as usual. In other words the NLRB was ignoring the Supreme Court completely. 

Dwight Lee writes an insightful story about the congressional pages that we find out are not being paid. Seems the elected officials who think private industry should pay entry level workers $10 an hour to learn basic work skills are the same elected officials that feel the US congress is doing those same entry level workers a favor by paying them nothing. Senators such as Barbra Boxer who urges the country to “heed the call” to raise the minimum wage to $10 a hour feels $0 a hour is more appropriate if her office is footing the bill. Charlie Rangel’s official web site notes although interns are unpaid they will gain “valuable work experience”. Well isn’t that what minimum wage earners in the private sector are doing also? The hypocrisy would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

Left out this day’s paper was any mention of the dismal employment numbers. With full time unemployment at 7.9% there are more people actually without a job than during the Great Depression and the number of people actually in the job market is at a 20 year low. Those statistics combined with record numbers of people completely giving up on finding work, you would think this would be front page news. But the employment numbers have been dismal for so long it is hardly news anymore, unemployment above 7.5% is the new norm. The actual number of people collecting food stamps is up 50% compared to the peak of the recession. And for some reason the number of people collecting federal disability is nearly double. We actually have twice as many people suffering injury or sickness, or at least collecting disability under this President. All the while the number of people living below the poverty line remains at an all times high and increased by 2.6 million this year, over four years after the recession ended.

The Journal also missed the US government failing to pass a budget for the fourth straight year, if we did have a budget it would be easy to see that the federal government will spend about 1 trillion dollars more than it will take in this year. Yet the Democrats continue to tell us the government does not have a spending problem. Just like the unemployment numbers, the federal debt is no longer newsThe media has noticed the President’s big push to ban military looking weapons from the hands of law abiding citizens. Of course they could not find much time to report when Obama’s justice department allowed over 2000 of those same type weapons slip into the hands of Mexican drug gangs.  Some of those weapons were actually used to kill a US Border Patrol Agent. The response is more of a “Nothing to see here folks . . . . . go back to Dancing with the Stars”.

So there we have it.  Somehow, Mr. Obama missed all of this in his State of the Union. All of the above is why conservatives voted against this President. I just wonder if this is  the change his supporters voted for?

So do you really need an AR-15?

In the mist of the heated debate on banning what the liberal media describe as “assault weapons” and the equally maligned “high capacity magazines” I have read many wonderful articles defending the American right to bear arms and the Second Amendment. Although on the surface these would seem to be the best way to deflect attacks on gun rights by liberals, I think most people are missing the liberal thought pattern which is the biggest threat to our Liberty.

The liberal argument to ban these or any weapons is based on two and only two arguments.  First argument is that “no one really needs a rifle like the AR-15”. The second is that “for the safety and common good, it is necessary to remove the right to own a weapon with military type features or a magazine that holds more than 10 rounds”

So let me make something perfectly clear, at no time are we required to justify our “need” of anything to the federal government.

As big of a threat to individual liberty that a ban on some particular weapons is and as bad a president that it sets for further gun grabbing by the federal government, it pales in comparison to the concept that the government can begin to base policy on the government deciding what the American citizen “needs”.  It would be wonderful if we could depend on the government to make the proper call in these decisions. But looking at how the liberal’s prioritize what should be banned for the public safety, it seems like there may be more to their agenda than just saving lives.

If the liberals currently in control of the federal government were really concerned about saving lives by banning things we don’t “need”, there are a number of areas that would have a much greater effect. 

Maybe the President could start by banning alcohol; no one can defend the “need” for intoxicating liquor and with 15,000 people dying in alcohol related auto accidents, the effect of lives saved would be immediate.  This experiment did not work out very well the first time the government tried it but liberals have never had a problem with repeating failed policy.

Harry Reid could introduce legislation to ban all tobacco products. Again, there is no “need” for that product. Recently a federal court ordered the tobacco products manufacturers to apologize for a product that according to the federal government kills more people than AIDS, accidents and all murders combined. You would think the liberals first priority would be to do away with a product that kills more people than all not only all gun deaths but all murders total yet, this product remains absolutely legal and no permit or background check is required.

Or, how about football? The game most love to watch every Sunday for months at a time.  We have heard a lot of talk from the left about “keeping the children safe”. Yet, an average of over a dozen children or young adults die every year from football injuries. While we may enjoy watching the game and some love to play the game, no one “needs” to play football – ever.

The list goes on and on - there is no need for auto racing, motorcycles, sky diving, trampolines, roller skates, bicycles . . .   And once we have relegated the right for the government to define our “needs”, why would the government stop with a plastic box that holds 30 bullets? To save the environment who needs a 2000 sq/ft house or a personal car or to go to the movies?

I think that the banning of weapons might have more to do with disarming the American public than about public safety. Otherwise, the self-appointed government elite that seem to be determined to act as our nanny would be targeting products that are statistically killing our citizens year after year.  Obama and his liberal allies sound like Castro or Chaves when they talk about eliminating rights “for our own good”.

Really, when you come to think about it, removing a citizen’s rights based on government defined needs is about as good a description of socialism as you can find and in reality, is the best explanation why citizens need the ability to defend themselves.

History has proven time and time again that in a free democratic society the one thing that is NOT needed is the government deciding what IS needed.

Wake Up, Socially Liberal Fiscal Conservatives

 

By Jonah Goldberg

January 18, 2013 12:00 A.M.

Dear Socially Liberal Fiscal-Conservative Friend,

That’s pretty toothy, so I’m going to call you “Bob.”

But whatever specific name you go by, Bob, you know who you are. You’re the sort of person who says to his conservative friends or co-workers something like, “I would totally vote for Republicans if they could just give up on these crazy social issues.”

When you explain your votes for Barack Obama, you talk about how Republicans used to be much more moderate and focused on important things such as low taxes, fiscal discipline, and balanced budgets.

When Colin Powell was on Meet the Press the other day, you nodded along as he lamented how the GOP has lost its way since the days when it was all about fiscal responsibility.

And, Bob, you think Republicans are acting crazy-pants on the debt ceiling. You don’t really follow all of the details, but you can just tell that the GOP is being “extreme,” thanks to those wacky tea partiers.

So, Bob, as a “fiscal conservative,” what was so outrageous about trying to cut pork — Fisheries in Alaska! Massive subsidies for Amtrak! — from the Sandy disaster-relief bill? What was so nuts about looking for offsets to pay for it?

Bob, I’m going to be straight with you. I never had much respect for your political acumen before, but you’re a sucker.

You’re still spouting this nonsense about being fiscally conservative while insisting that the GOP is the problem. You buy into the media’s anti-Republican hysteria no matter what the facts are. Heck, you even believe it when Obama suggests he’s like an Eisenhower Republican.

Well, let’s talk about Eisenhower, your kind of Republican. Did you know that in his famous farewell address he warned about the debt? “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage,” he said. “We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.”

Bob, we are that insolvent phantom, you feckless, gormless clod. The year Eisenhower delivered that speech, U.S. debt was roughly half our GDP. But that was when we were still paying off WWII (not to mention things like the Marshall Plan), and the defense budget constituted more than half the U.S. budget (today it’s a fifth and falling). Now, the debt is bigger than our GDP. Gross Domestic Product is barely $15 trillion. The national debt is over $16 trillion and climbing — fast. The country isn’t going broke, Bob, it is broke.

When George W. Bush added nearly $5 trillion in national debt in two terms you were scandalized. When Obama added more than that in one term, you yawned. When, in 2006, then-senator Obama condemned Bush’s failure of leadership and vowed to vote against raising the debt ceiling, you thought him a statesman. Obama, who wants to borrow trillions more, now admits that was purely a “political vote.”

Yet when Republicans actually have the courage of Obama’s own convictions, you condemn them.

You nodded sagely when Obama said we needed a “balanced approach” to cut the deficit. He said he couldn’t rein in entitlements without also raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.” Well, he won that fight. We raised taxes on millionaires and billionaires exactly as much as he wanted. We also raised the payroll tax on everyone.

Obama’s response to getting the tax hikes he wanted? He says we still need a “balanced approach” — i.e., even more tax hikes.

Anyone who calls himself a fiscal conservative understands we have a spending problem. Do the math. A two-earner couple who retired in 2011 after making $89,000 per year will have paid about $114,000 into Medicare over their lifetimes but will receive $355,000. When will it dawn on you that Obama doesn’t think we have a spending problem? I ask because when he said “we don’t have a spending problem,” it seemed to have no effect on you.

And yet you still think Paul Ryan’s budget was “extreme.” Do you know when it balanced the budget? 2040. What’s a non-extreme date to balance the budget, Bob? 2113?

Look, Bob, I don’t want to go spelunking in that cranium of yours. I don’t know why you think you’re a fiscal conservative. The simple fact is, you’re not. The green-eye-shaded Republicans you claim to miss would be scandalized by the mess we’re in, largely thanks to voters like you, Bob. Eisenhower would take a flamethrower to today’s Washington.

I don’t expect you to vote Republican, never mind admit you’re simply a liberal. But please stop preening about your fiscal conservatism, particularly as you condemn the GOP for not being fiscal conservatives, even when they are the only fiscal conservatives in town.

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. You can write to him by e-mail atJonahsColumn@aol.com, or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

After guns then what?

Sometimes we begin to see a political movement’s true colors at the strangest times.

Recently Bill Clinton was supposed to be giving a speech on technology in Las Vegas. In the middle of the speech he diverted to a rant about gun control and in the middle of that rant he made the interesting if not surprising comment “why does anyone need a 30 round clip for a weapon”.   

And there we have it; the Liberal’s view of the future for America is not individual liberty for citizens. It’s not Americans having the greatest freedom to live their lives as they see fit. The Liberal’s view of America is a country where the government will decide what you “need”.

Today the Liberal “powers that be” have deemed we don’t need high capacity magazines. Maybe next year we will not need SUV’s, or two bathrooms in our houses. Maybe Washington will decide we don’t need to keep our houses so warm, or that we don’t even need private homes. In the last few years our elected officials decided we don’t need incandescent light bulbs or toilets that flush with too much water. More and more the people in Washington have moved from managing the government to managing our lives.

Recently a co-worker of mine was visiting a customer in China, it was the start of winter and he ask his host why it was so cold in the hotel lobby and in the factory he was visiting. The host explained the government had not turned the heat on yet, apparently the Chinese government had determined the people did not need heat at that time.  

History shows us a long list of failed governments that in order to maintain their power, continually crush the personal liberties of the citizens, all the time telling them they don’t need things like free speech or freedom of assembly. In all these cases, the first thing the government deemed its citizens did not need was firearms.

The funny thing is that being able to purchase a 30 round magazine is ultimately the only thing that really prevents the people in the government from the very tyranny Clinton and his liberal friends’ envision for our future.  Realizing what this one piece of legislation can lead to clarifies that the ability to purchase a 30 round magazine Mr. Clinton is exactly what we as American citizens need.

Not that it is any of your business.

A vote for Obama counts, but maybe not how you think.

On Tuesday, we all get to make a decision. Sure this election is about a lot of important issues that pertain to things that affect our daily lives but, it really is about something much bigger. This election is about how we view the influence and power of the federal government going forward in the future. There have only been a few times in history when a presidential election really changed the direction of federal power and ultimately our own personal freedom.

 The election of FDR certainly had a profound influence in the scope and reach of the federal influence. Most people view things like social security as a positive influence of the federal government: forgetting the tradeoff that for your whole life, the federal government takes over 12% of your income to administer the program and the program is still headed for insolvency without greater financial input from the citizens. What would our standard of living be like if we had the trillions of dollars to invest or spend rather than the federal government?  No one can argue that at the end of almost 12 years of FDR control, the federal government had grabbed power in numerous areas it never was involved in before. And with it, we Americans lost numbers of individual liberties we had up to that time taken for granted.

Ronald Reagan’s overwhelming victory in 1980 lead to a swing back to smaller federal government but his attempts to rebuild our military and his inability to force Congress to stick to spending cuts in other areas lead the country to the first large budget deficit increases since the end on WWII. Returning the US Military was important, but the precedent set was that the federal government could live with massive debt and has led to the 16 trillion dollar debt under this President. 

My point is some elections, more than others, have larger consequences. The federal government never gets smaller. Its power and control of our lives almost never decreases. Slowly, year after year, we trade away more of our personal and economic freedom in the name of “security” or “fairness” or “compassion” and more times than not the federal power grab is not in the least bit “fair” or “compassionate”.  Someone may in the short term benefit for this bestowing of federal tax dollars on a chosen group, but someone else must certainly pay for that gift. Using federal tax dollars to bail out a failing business might seem “compassionate” except to that businesses competitor who behaved responsible and does not need a government hand out. For example - workers at Ford pay taxes and those tax dollars were used to bail out a mis-managed General Motors just so GM can come back stronger with federal government backing and potentially take away some market share from Ford, potentially costing the Ford workers their jobs. This is not in any way “fair” or “compassionate”.

I remember reading about the devastating heat wave in Europe in 2003 that caused over 14 thousand mostly elderly deaths in France. Many died in government run retirement homes that had no air conditioning.  Most waiting in tiny un-air conditioned apartments.  When I heard this, my first thought was, after decades of socialist central government control, these people could not afford air conditioning? Here in the US, over 90% of houses are air conditioned. Then the article went on to say that the French federal government was setting up a data base so government workers could check on the elderly in times of extreme heat. No thoughts of why? Why after a life time of work, the vast majority of retires can’t afford A/C, No outrage that government run retirement homes were not air conditioned?  Just another government solution started at the top that by the time is gets to where it needs to be is useless. A solution that grows the size of their government and really would not help reduce the suffering of their elder population at all.

During this crisis where were the local governments in France? Where were the citizens? Where were the families? Unfortunately the worse of the heat wave hit during the two weeks the French take their annual holiday, most people were at the beach. I am sure they were having a good time and depending on the government to make sure everything was OK. After decades of the government solving every problem, the ability for the French to help their neighbors or even the families has been bred out of them. To people living with such an over bearing federal government there is no solution that is not a government solution.

As a lady in NJ said two days after the recent hurricane strike in the North East “no one has come to help us”. The settlers that crossed the country to settle the west did not wait for the federal government to help, the survivors of the Johnstown flood did not sit and wait for federal government “help”. We are becoming a nation sheep being lead to the feed troth provided by the government. 

So the big question we will answer in this election is do we support Obama’s version of America?  One where the federal government consumes more and more of this country’s financial resources?     One where the federal government makes more and more of our personal decisions?   One where the federal government takes more and more power from the states and local governments and dictates more and more decisions that were once freedoms we all enjoyed?

Did the founding fathers envision a nation of sheep being herded by the federal government shepherd? If you think so then Obama is your man. If you think the country was founded on a very different ideal then you had best pick the other guy.

Federal Laws

I wonder if anyone really thinks about the never ending list of federal laws, rules and regulations that flow out of Washington year after year?(1)

Now obviously, to have a civilized society we need some laws to set a level playing field for all the citizens. But you would kind of think that at some point, say after a couple of hundred years, you would have all the laws you needed to structure a free and functioning democracy. My concern is that, in most cases, every new law, regulation or rule decrease our freedoms. Take for instance the new health insurance laws, over 1000 pages of new rules that did not exist before passage of this law.

Before this law, you had the right to decide if you wanted to spend your money on health insurance. You no longer have that right. Before this law, you had the right to decide exactly what options were included with the health insurance you bought. You no longer have that right. Before this law, you had the right to decide if you wanted to have your insurance cover your adult children. You no longer have that right. And the list goes on and on. A 17-year-old college student used to have the right to a credit card without a co signer, no longer. A long time ago you had the right to decide for yourself if you wanted auto insurance, no longer. No longer can you decide if you want to wear a seatbelt, or own a establishment that allows smoking.

I am not saying that some of the rules don’t have a positive effect. What I am saying is we are a lot less free than we were 20, 30 or 100 years ago. And our freedoms continue to be infringed upon with every new addition to federal law. It’s a little scary when I think about where it all will end.

So, I started to think about what we really should consider when we are deciding, as citizens to support or oppose any new federal law and I came up with three basic areas that we should consider when considering some new law.

1. Is it constitutional? No matter how much good we think a law will do, no matter how much we want a particular regulation to be enacted, it must adhere to the constitution.

The founding fathers were very familiar with the problems of an un-checked government. Heck, they had a king appointed by God. One can’t really disagree with his decisions. So they set out to write a constitution that protected our basic human rights, as laid out in the Declaration of Independence, and limited the power of the federal government to a very basic area of control. They stated very clearly that any powers not granted to the Federal government in the constitution are reserved for the states. Now, the first few laws passed were pretty easy to understand. We needed a law against murder because to murder someone deprived them of their basic human right to life. Same thing with stealing, an infringement on you right to liberty. Things get a little cloudier with laws that seize you income so the government can distribute it to someone else. This type of law now gets the government picking the winners and losers on our system Government give a tax break to people buying hybrid cars, winner, people who buy hybrid cars, losers everyone who paid taxes so it could be given to hybrid car owners. Think about this, this is not the government collecting taxes to support the government, this is the government seizing your property (income) just so the government can distribute it to people the government has decided are more deserving of the fruits of your labor than you are. Thinking of it another way lets say you have 3 TV sets and your neighbor has only one, the government decides that’s not fair, comes to your house, takes one of your TV’s and hands it to your neighbor. No matter how well meaning these wealth redistribution type laws are it is pretty hard to find the power granted in the constitution to allow your property to be seized and distributed as our elected officials see fit.

2. What are the intended consequences? Will the new law or regulation really accomplish our intent? The new health care bill is expected to improve health care. Yet, in the over 2000 pages, there is almost nothing about health care, only health insurance. Is the only problem with our health care caused and related to our health insurance? Does limiting you options for health insurance and benefits really improve your chances for good health? Will the trillions of new tax dollars spent really improve most people’s health?

3. What are the unintended consequences? In 1963, the government started mandating seat belts in new cars. No longer did you have the right to decide if you wanted this feature, the government mandated it. As the years went on this mandate expanded from just the front seat to all seats, then to mandatory seat belt use (enforced by the federal government withholding federal tax money to states that did not enact mandatory seat belt laws). So, the government collected taxes from all states, then used that collected money as a bribe to get states to do as the federal government wants but really did not have the power under the constitution to enforce. Then the government, seeing that people still were not behaving like the federal government wanted, enacted laws to make air bags mandatory. “Sorry you don’t get a choice, the people in Washington know what is good for you.” And then we find out that the new federal mandated safety device forced on us actually kills people, from 1993-1996 alone 32 people died from air bag related injuries including 21 children (2). So then we get more laws and now it is not legal to put your child in the front seat of your car. We actually have safety warnings in new cars (another new law) telling you to be careful because your federally mandated safety device could kill you. Now that is what I call an unintended consequence.

We are slowly trading our liberty for the security of mommy government, protecting us from the challenges of life. We are slowly trading away our personal freedom, the one real thing that makes this country great and unique.

(1) How Many Federal Regulations are There?
According to the Office of the Federal Register, in 1998, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), the official listing of all regulations in effect, contained a total of 134,723 pages in 201 volumes that claimed 19 feet of shelf space. In 1970, the CFR totaled only 54,834 pages.

(2) The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that since 1990, airbag deployment has killed 227 people in low-severity crashes, including 76 drivers, 10 adult passengers, 119 children between the ages of 1 and 11, and 22 infants. Of the 76 adult drivers killed, 28 were women under 5 feet 2 inches tall, and 4 of the 10 adult passengers killed were females smaller than that height

The tax man cometh, and he's wearing a disguise

We have seen over the last four years the federal government suing states. The feds have sued Arizona, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas and Florida among others. Of course we have seen the feds sue companies; Boeing, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo are just a few. But not many people have heard about the latest list of federal “enforcement actions” the Federal government suing cities. In this case of Federal government expansion of jurisdiction is to punish cites, and by extension the tax payers, for violations of recently changed EPA rules about waste water run-off.  

Most city sewer systems have some safety system to dump waste into water ways to prevent backups into citizen’s basements. But now the EPA has mandated city’s sewer systems can only have four discharges a year.

·         Does the EPA take into consideration how much rain a city gets? . . . . . . . . Nope

·         Does it consider how much a city discharges in one instant? . . . . . . .Nope

One gallon or a million gallons, it still counts as one discharge.  The best thing for the government is that no Congressional oversight is required; just more bureaucratic rule making that is a hallmark of this administration.

From a list of 227 violators identified by the EPA there has been 25 cities fined 21 billion dollars in the last four years and if Obama is reelected you can be sure the EPA will vigorously pursue these supposed law braking municipalities. 

It’s not that American cities have not made extensive efforts to combat the problem of waste being discharged into waterways during heavy rains. For years cities have developed rain gardens, catch basins and other “green” solutions to control rain water run-off. These are lower cost solutions than the federal mandate of rebuilding complete city sewer systems.  

The Confederation of Mayors insists they are making progress and the EPA vendetta can’t be justified by science. Cities are spending twice what they were 25 years ago on controlling discharge and still being forced to spend more and more to make smaller and smaller gains. It will take more than 300 billion dollars to make upgrades to meet expanding EPA regulations. Forcing cities to accelerate upgrades on their systems will mean new bond issues and increased water rates; the mayor of Lima Ohio testified to Congress that the new rules will increase annual sewer bills for city residents which averaged $330 a year to $ 850 a year.

A recent Wall Street Journal article labeled this EPA overreach the “The Obama Storm Tax”.  I am sure the administration would insist this was not a tax, just like the “fine” for not purchasing health insurance is not a tax, and the 3% fee on sales of medical equipment manufactures is not a tax. I guess you can make the claim you have not increased taxes on the middle class when nothing the federal government does that takes money out of the citizens pocket is actually called a tax.

To me it is not surprising that a government that already borrows 40% of every dollar it spends it will find new and inventive ways to separate the citizens from their money – you from YOUR money. Obama will tell you he only is going to increase taxes on the very wealthy but if you spend ten minutes looking at the amount of money available from that segment of the population compared to Obama’s 16 trillion dollar federal debt, you will realize all their money is NOT going to cover the check Obama is writing and as soon as he is done with the “wealthy”, once again the tax man WILL cometh and he will be coming for you.

Facts are stubborn things, or did Obama just lie?

My good liberal friend Rich told me the other day that spending under Obama has not increased.  The whole cause of the massive increase in federal debt was only caused by the decrease in federal income because of the poor economy. This has been a line from the Liberals supported by the media, the other line being ” it’s all Bush’s fault”.

To quote President Obama in his 2009 State of the Union address, “By the time I took office, we had a one year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door”

This would be a good argument to explain the exploding federal debt under Obama if it was true. But as we have seen so many times in the past, the President has a real problem with the truth. Let’s look at some of the facts.

In 2008, President Bush sent a 2009 budget to the Congress with 3.1 trillion dollars of federal spending and a projected deficit of $400 billion dollars. Voting for this budget along with almost every Democrat in Congress was then Senators Obama, Biden, and Clinton, along with Rep. Rahm Emanuel. In fact, the final bill passed the Senate with only two Republican votes and passed the house with no Republican support at all. Now it is true that President Bush, in the interest of getting along with Congress and finding common ground, signed the final bill but, it is a little a little difficult to see how Mr. Obama can conveniently forget his (and the major players in his administration) role in supporting the very bill he blames for “the mess”. President Obama, Vice President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton also voted in favor of the 700 billion dollar Troubled Asset Relief bill that piled more debt onto the federal government. This, buy the way, was the last time the federal government passed a budget. The democratic leadership in Washington has failed to pass a budget since Obama came to office.

Obama has said many times during campaigning that we can’t return the government to the very people that created the fiscal mess.  I have to agree, and seeing it was Obama and a Democratic Congress with a signature from President Bush that brought us the 2009 federal budget that produced the first one trillion dollar deficit, I would say we should not return any of them to Washington.

Of course this does not explain the last three fiscal years that produced three more years of over trillion dollar deficits, two years with total democratic control in Congress. Federal spending increased every year from 2009 to 2012, and in 2012 spending was over 1 trillion dollars more than 2008. All this along with anemic federal tax recites due to the non-existent Obama economic recovery has led to a record 16 trillion dollar federal debt, over 6 trillion more than when Obama took office. The federal debt has increased more in 4 years of Obama “leadership” than 8 years of President Bush.

The Presidents confusion about the 2009 budget might be understandable seeing his first debate coach was John Kerry, maybe Obama was for the 2009 budget before he was against it.

What does the IRS have to do with health care?

The ill named “Affordable Care Act” (aka: Obamacare) has many parts that are downright terrifying. There is the yet to be named panel that will make far reaching decisions about our health care. I say yet to be named because although the panel members were supposed to be selected by this time it appears the President is delaying the appointments until after the election. No sense in drawing attention to a board of bureaucrats deciding what kind of health care you can get before an election.

And the 3% tax on every single medical devise sold in this country. It’s an interesting way to lower the cost of health care, tax all medical devices and assess that tax on total sales not profit, so even if a company has no or little profit it still is hit with this tax on every product it sells. Need a pace maker, it will cost you 3% more under Obamacare, need a wheel chair, knee brace, crutches, all 3% more thanks to the bill that is supposed to make health care affordable.

But nothing is more concerning than the agency that will be enforcing the majority of the Obamacare provisions is the IRS. Yep let’s get the IRS intimately involved in our health care. The extra work load will mean the IRS will hire 4000-4500 new employees with most of them working on enforcement. The IRS will be charged with making sure every citizen has “adequate” coverage and each employer provides “affordable” coverage. What’s “adequate”? Well no one really knows. We have to wait for the un-named panel to decide exactly what that means. And if the health insurance you have picked or the one your employer provides does not meet the yet named criteria, the IRS will assess a penalty.

According to a recent Fox New article by y Elizabeth MacDonald  the Taxpayer Advocate Office [TAO] (a Federal IRS overseer) states that tax payers will now be complied to share with the IRS.

    *Insurance plan information, including who is covered under the plan and the dates of coverage;

     *The costs of your family’s health insurance plans;

     *Whether a taxpayer had an offer of employer-sponsored health insurance;

      *The cost of employer-sponsored insurance;

      *Whether a taxpayer received a premium tax credit;

     *Whether a taxpayer has an exemption from the individual responsibility requirement.

Makes you warm and fuzzy sharing a lot more personal information with the IRS doesn’t it? To adequately determine if you have “adequate” coverage the IRS might have to communicate and share information with insurance companies, employers or other government agencies. Because your penalty for not having adequate coverage is based not on your income status but on your “household” income this means the IRS must not only track your earning but compile earning information on you household.

For small employers we have a $2,000 penalty if they don’t proved “affordable” health insurance. To help the employer understand if the health insurance is “affordable” by the government definition the government says it must cost less that 9.5% of the employees gross income. So for the employee we base weather his coverage is “adequate” on his total household income, but to determine if the employer is providing “affordable” coverage we will use employee gross income. 

Like everything involving the federal government and the IRS simple huh? And we have not even scratched the surface in understanding what is in the 2000 pages of new federal law. Speaker Pelosi was not far off the mark when she said “we have to pass the law to know what is in it”. So much of this law is left to be defined by federal bureaucrats we will not know what it all means for years.

By then it just might be too late. 

Joe Biden and the Effective Tax Rates of the Buried Middle Class

"This is deadly earnest," Biden said. "How they can justify raising taxes on a middle class that has been buried the last four years? How in Lord's name can they justify raising their taxes with these tax cuts?

Joe Biden, Vice-President, Charlotte, NC

 

Yes, Mr. Biden, they have and we know who has been running the last four years of economic turmoil. There are two problems, however in your direction of angst.

1 – Mr Romney, if elected, has not issued, discussed or proposed raising taxes on the middle class; the class that you have so effectively buried, though obviously not with shovel ready graves. He has proposed extending the current tax rates and closing the loop holes the rich use so effectively to avoid excessive taxes.

2 – The middle class bears so very little of the transparent Federal income tax burden. I say transparent because we all, ALL citizens, pay the enormous burden of the Federal Government’s regulation policies. Gas tax, corporate tax (passed on to the consumer and among the very highest in the free world) along with a plethora of other little cuts that you and your policies make us pay

The Tax Foundation has done another great job in displaying who pays for what and just how progressive your system has become. I’ll note for honesty that the Bush Tax cuts help move the burden from the middle class by lowering tax rates and the Child tax credit. I have heard that Mr. Romney wants to extend these and close the loop holes for the very wealthy thus closing the gap.

Tax Foundation

Our Progressive Tax System

 

Thanks to blog "For love of Family and Country" for this .

So you think your vote does not count?

In 2008 Barack Obama won by almost 9.5 million votes. It is easy to think that your one vote would not have made any difference in that election, and really you are correct. Your one single vote against Obama would have just meant Obama won by 9,499,999 votes. Not even a moral victory there.

But the power of the voter to influence the direction of our government, and hence the direction of our country is not in the single vote, it is the combination of single votes into a block. It is my single vote and your single vote and your neighbor’s single vote.

According to the census bureau, in 2008 there were 229 million people eligible to vote but only 131 million voted. That’s 98 million voters who failed to vote! About 1/3 of the country is registered as Republican. So if we assume 1/3 of the people who were eligible and did not vote were Republicans that would be over 32 million non-voting Republicans….. we only needed 30 % of those 32 million voters to defeat Obama. 

And if it was a close election, it gets even more evident how every vote is important. In 1962, President Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon by 112,000 votes; the University of Tennessee gets more people than that for a football game. Think how different the world would be if Nixon had won in 1960. 

Votes for Senators and Congressman can be even more important. In 2008, Al Franken won his Senate seat in Minnesota by 231 votes. Why is that important? That Senate seat gave the Democrats a filibuster proof majority and they used that majority to pass “The Affordable Care Act” aka: Obamacare. Without that seat the Republicans would have blocked Obamacare with a filibuster. 231 republicans in Minnesota who thought their vote did not count made possible the federal government taking over 20% of the US economy and changing health insurance as we know it.  

In 2008 President Obama won by almost 9.5 million votes, but he did not win because 9.5 million more people voted for Obama than McCain. President Obama won because 9.5 million republicans failed to vote because they thought their vote did not count. 

When in reality, the only time your vote truly does not count, is when you don’t cast it.

After 19 trillion dollars of welfare spending are we better off?

The main theme I have tried to follow with this blog is the inherent unconstitutional nature of the many well-meaning but miss guided programs and laws that are coming out of the US federal government.  But the real crime of the continued infringement on our civil liberties is not only don’t most of these programs work as intended, but many times they do more harm than good.

We see examples every day of failed money wasting government programs. A few months back we talked about the vast amounts of money poured into the Department of Education yet we see no tangible evidence that it has done anything to raise the level of education in the US.

 My good liberal friend Rich often accuses me of being uncaring because I don’t support federal tax dollars used as a form of charity. Even if I could get past the issue of the government redistributing the citizens wealth (which I can’t) or that nowhere in the constitution is the federal government charged with seizing the property from one citizen to give it to another citizen, I cannot get over the total lack of success or accountability of the vast majority of these programs.

Recently a researcher for the Heritage Foundation, Robert Rector, testified before Congress about the size and scope of the welfare programs in this country. Now critics of Mr. Reactor or the Heritage Foundation in general might disagree with the opinions of Rector but you cannot disagree with the facts of his report.

Today in the US there are 79 overlapping separate mean tested federal welfare programs. Means tested programs are programs that provide aid directly to individuals or families.  Unlike programs like Social Security and Medicare, no prior financial contributions are required to participate. In 2011, total federal and mandatory state payments to all federal welfare programs amounted to 930 billion dollars. That amount of money if distributed in cash to every person in the lowest 1/3 of wage earners in the country would amount to over $9,000 per person. Mr. Rector concludes that this amount “is more than sufficient to bring the income of every lower income American to 200 percent of the federal poverty level, roughly $44,000 per year for a family of four. (This calculation combines potential welfare aid with non-welfare income currently received by the poor.)”

Since President Johnson declared a war on poverty in 1964, total spending on welfare programs has topped 19 trillion dollars. As a comparison the Heritage report notes that total spending on all wars from our Revolution through the war in Afghanistan was only about 7 trillion dollars. If America had performed as poorly in our military wars as we have in our war on poverty we would not be here to even have this discussion.  When the war on poverty started, welfare spending equaled 1% of GDP.  In 2011 that had jumped to 6%. Spending on means tested programs has increase 290% from 1988-2008 faster than any other government program. Everyone knows that federal spending on Social Security and Medicare is huge, but few people realize that means tested welfare spending equals 75 cents for every dollar spent on these two programs. And although the majority of welfare money goes to families, 8% actually goes to abled bodied adults with no dependents.

And what does the future hold? Under the last three years of the Obama administration we have seen welfare spending soar. From 2008 to 2011, spending on means tested programs increased 40%. Much of this could be contributed to the lack of recovery from the recession that ended in 2009 but looking at Obama administration projections in the future we see welfare spending increasing not decreasing after the recovery takes place, maybe the President does not anticipate a recovery any time in the future. By 2014 administration projections have welfare spending exceeding one trillion dollars and over 1.5 trillion in 2022.

After 50 years and almost 20 trillion dollars we see absolutely no decrease in the rate of poverty in America but the Presidents solution is to keep doing the same thing.

What if all that money had been left in the hands of the people? What if every citizen had more money to contribute to private charities? What if small business had more money to expand their business and hire more employees? What if the money used to provide office space to the thousands of federal workers who administer the billions of dollars allocated to poverty programs was just used directly at the local level to actually help those living in poverty? Would the country and its citizens be worse off or better?

The Liberals say I am mean for opposing continuing the same failed policies of the past, but then apparently Liberals believe spending 20 trillion dollars of other people’s money and leaving 15% of our citizens mired in poverty is being compassionate.

Their definition of compassionate is a little different than mine.

Why would anyone vote for Obama part 2

As a conservative, I, like many people, have reservations about Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate. For independent voters it must be difficult to assemble a list of reasons to vote for Romney, we do not know much about him and the relentless personal attack ads have hurt Romney’s ability to define his views.

But maybe a better question would be why would anyone vote for Obama? Under his watch we have:

·         40 straight months of unemployment at over 8%. Two full years after the recession ended.

·         Home ownership is now at a 16 year low.

·         Still experiencing record amounts of home foreclosures.

·         Six trillion dollars of more federal debt than when Obama came in to office.

·         Record number of people are collecting food stamps.

·         Three straight years with no federal budget.

·         A justice department out of control and thousands of weapons shipped to Mexican drug gangs by the United States federal government, some that were used to murder a US Border Patrol officer.

·         Gas prices are up 67%

·         Middle East is in flames and American interest attacked worldwide, including the murder of a US Ambassador.  Last time that happened was 1978.

·         American troops dying at a rate of one a day in an Afghan war that appears leaderless.

·         Iran closer than ever to an Atomic weapon.

·         Poverty rates at over 15% with 46 million people now living in poverty. The highest rate in 20 years.

·         500 million taxpayer dollars wasted on solar panel company Solyndra. Even after it was clear Solyndra’s business plan had no chance to ever turn a profit, the President continued to dump tax money into a this “green technology hole”.

·         Obama appoints Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, to head his Jobs Council at the same time GE was shipping thousands of jobs out of this country. Suppose it did not really matter because Obama promptly ignored his job council.

·         Obamacare was the answer to all our health care worries.  But for some reason, the Obama administration saw fit to grant over 2000 wavers from the requirements of that bill.  Many going to large unions and corporations

·         Obama told us if we liked our health insurance we could keep it. We know now that was a lie.

·         In 2008 Obama said he would post all bills for five days for public comment before signing them. Of course that never happened.  Some people will say anything to get elected.

·         In 2008 Obama said he would cut the deficit in half in four years, in fact he said that he did not deserve to be reelected if he did not. Nice to see we have found something to agree about.

·          Appointed former lobbyist Islam Siddiqui as America’s Chief Agriculture Negotiator ,

·         Appointed telecom lobbyist Eric Holder to Attorney General (Holder was also a top fundraiser),

·         Appointed education lobbyist Tom Vilsack to secretary of agriculture,

·         Appointed defense lobbyist William Lynn to deputy defense secretary,

·          Appointed anti-tobacco lobbyist William Corr to deputy health and human services secretary,

·         Appointed energy lobbyist David Hayes to deputy interior secretary,  

·         Appointed Goldman Sachs lobbyist Mark Patterson as chief of staff to treasury secretary Geithner,

·         Appointed variety lobbyist Ron Klain as chief of staff to Joe Biden,

·         Appointed lobbyist Mona Sutphen to deputy White House chief of staff ,

·         Appointed civil rights lobbyist Melody Barnes to domestic policy council director,  

·         Appointed Hispanic lobbyist Cecilia Munoz to director of intergovernmental affairs,

·         Appointed union lobbyist Patrick Gaspard to political affairs director,  

·         Appointed lobbyist Michael Strautmanis to chief of staff to the president’s assistant for intergovernmental relations ,

·         Appointed lobbyist Erik Hirschhorn to the Commerce department,

·         Appointed lobbyist Michael Punke to represent the US before the WTO ,

·         Appointed lobbyist Jacqueline Barrien to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,

·         Appointed lobbyist Emmitt Beliveau to Deputy Assistant for Advance at the White House,

·         Appointed lobbyist Cassandra Butts to Deputy Counsel at the White House, 

·         Appointed lobbyist Martha Coven as Special Assistant at the White House, 

·         Appointed lobbyist Phillip J. Crowley as assistant secretary for public affairs at the State Department, 

·         Appointed Fannie Mae lobbyist Thomas Donilon as Deputy National Security Adviser at the NSA,

·         Appointed lobbyist Derek Douglas as Special Assistant for Urban Affairs at the White House,

·         Appointed lobbyist Jocelyn Frye as Director of Policy and Projects at the Office of the First Lady,

·         Appointed education lobbyist Gabriella Gomez to assistant secretary at the Department of Education,

·         Appointed lobbyist Krysta Harden to assistant secretary at the Department of Agriculture,

·         Appointed lobbyist Alan Hoffmann to Deputy Chief of Staff to the vice president, 

·         Appointed AT&T lobbyist Sean Kennedy as special assistant at the White House, 

·         Appointed MPAA lobbyist Jon Liebowitz as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission,

·         Appointed lobbyist Robert Litt to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,

·         Appointed lobbyist Demetrios J. Marantis as deputy U.S. trade representative ,

·         Appointed lobbyist Dennis McDonough as deputy assistant to the president, 

·         Appointed lobbyist Leon Panetta as director of the CIA,

·         Appointed Audubon Society lobbyist Robert Perciasepe to deputy commissioner of the EPA,

·         Appointed lobbyist Daniel Poneman to deputy secretary at the Department of Energy,

·         Appointed lobbyist Peter Rundlet to deputy assistant at the White House,

·         Appointed lawyer lobbyist Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of Health and Human Services,

·         Appointed lobbyist Susan Sher to chief of staff at the Office of the First Lady,

·         Appointed lobbyist Dana Singiser to Special Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs,

·         Appointed lobbyist Nancy Stoner to Deputy Assistant Administrator for Water at the EPA,

·         Appointed lobbyist Thomas Strickland to assistant secretary at the Department of the Interior, 

·         Appointed lobbyist Karl R. Thompson as a lawyer at the Department of Justice, 

·         Appointed lobbyist John Trasvina to assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 

·         Appointed lobbyist Dan Turton to Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs at the White House,

·         Appointed lobbyist Christine Varney to Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust at the Justice Department, 

·         Appointed lobbyist Richard Verma to assistant secretary at the State Department, 

·         Appointed lobbyist William J. Wilkins to Chief Counsel at the IRS (thanks to Post Libertarian blog for that list)

·         For the first time in History the US has lost its AAA credit rating; even Jimmy Carter could not mess things up that bad.

·         Absolute no ability to lead, Reagan, Clinton and both Bush’s found ways to work with the other party, this President’s inability to work with Congress has brought the government to a new level of low.

·         Today’s headlines in our local paper reads “city poverty rate up 24%”.

·         Arthur Davis, an early supporter of Obama and co-chair of the committee to elect Obama in 2008, switched sides and spoke at the Republican convention might have put it best when he said   "America is a land of second chances, and I gather you have room for the estimated 6 million of us who know we got it wrong in 2008 and who want to fix it."

Mitt Romney might be an unknown quantity BUT  the President is definitely not.

 Do we really want; can we really stand four more years of what we have seen in the last 40 months?