Who Owns Your Money: You or the Government?
Susan Stamper Brown, FloydReports.com
Ever heard the phrase, “Perception is reality?” To the honest person, understanding this concept can inspire you to excel. To the dishonest, perception becomes the mask under which lies vulnerability or perhaps a more sinister reality.
This is true in the court system, as we have witnessed this week with the Casey Anthony verdict. It’s all about perception and persuasion. The same is true in the world of politics. It’s rarely about righting wrongs or serving humanity; it’s about the furtherance of an ideological agenda.
A classic example is the ongoing debate over whether wages earned by an individual is fair compensation for his or her hard work, or is that compensation actually owned and controlled by the government.
How many times have we heard Democrats tell job creators it’s time to cough up a little more cash, and then complain that the government is somehow “losing” money — unless it raises taxes?
How can you lose money that was never yours to begin with? You can’t. But a whole lot of Americans have bought into that perception – because they’ve heard it repeatedly, and now perceive it as fact.
The demonization of corporate jet owners….
Obama Promises “Job-Killing Tax Increases” After 2012, Says Job Losses Prove Stimulus Worked (Videos)
Ben Johnson, The White House Watch
If you were regularly described as one of the most “brilliant” leaders in our nation’s history and were poised to launch a 16-month-long crusade to convince the nation to re-elect you, how would you sell your dismal economic record? Barack Obama gave his answer in a press conference yesterday, when he promised to deliver “massive, job-killing tax increases” and claimed a 9.2 percent unemployment rate proves he was right all along and Americans should be grateful.
Obama’s plans for the nation include more redistribution of (borrowed, Chinese) wealth, financed by $1 trillion in tax increases. Even Obama understands the likely impact of this move. In 2009, he told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, “You don’t raise taxes in a recession,” and during the lame duck session of Congress he called extending the Bush tax cuts “an essential step on the road to recovery.” In Monday’s press conference, he admitted:
So, when you hear folks saying, “Well, the president shouldn’t want massive job killing tax increases when the economy is this weak.” Nobody’s looking to raise taxes right now. We’re talking about potentially 2013 and the out years.
In other words, he promised he will wait until he is safely re-elected and beyond the reach of the people (except for impeachment), then destroy the economy. Obama ’12!
(Story continues after video.)
Only the most naive believe these tax hikes will only touch the “millionaires and billionaires” Obama constantly inveighs against. The Associated Press noted yesterday, “Proposals under consideration include raising taxes on small business owners and potentially low- and middle-income families.” After all, the wealthiest Americans are already paying a disproportionate percentage of income taxes. Patrick Tyrrell of the Foundry blog writes that the IRS estimated as of “2008, the top 25 percent of income earners—those earning $67,280 or more—pay 86.34 percent of the income taxes, yet earn only 67.38 percent of all income in the U.S.” If Obama is re-elected, he has told American you can expect unemployment to skyrocket.
Obama then added an odd claim: that the discouraging job reports of Recovery Summer 2.0 prove his stimulus plan worked. He said….
Cave on the Debt Ceiling and Kiss 2012 Goodbye
Michael Reagan, FloydReports.com
If the GOP is really serious about winning back the presidency, it needs to win the deficit debate. The government of these United States is broke — flat broke — and if the nation is to survive as the prosperous nation it has long been, Republicans must restore fiscal sanity and call a halt to spending money we don’t have!
That’s what the Republicans promised us they would do last November, and largely on the strength of that pledge we let them take back the House. After all, it’s obvious that we can’t trust the Democrats to spend the public’s money wisely and well.
President Obama is promising to seek $3 in spending cuts for every $1 of new taxes, exactly as my father Ronald Reagan sought to do. When my dad passed away in 2004, he was still waiting for that $3. Barack Obama can expect the same dismal outcome.
Ask the first President George Bush how it worked out when he cut a deal with the Democrats in 1991 to….
Americans Will See if Republicans Are Any Different Than Democrats
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, FloydReports.com
Speculation is running rampant about why House Majority Leader Eric Cantor walked out of debt ceiling talks with Democrats. Most of the speculation is credited by pundits to insider maneuvering between Speaker John Boehner and Cantor. The Washington Post reports the debt deal maneuvering this way, “One analysis of the House GOP right now is that there are two players in the GOP who can cut a budget deal: Eric Cantor and John Boehner … One of them is going to have to do it. Which means one of them is going to lose his job. The optimistic take is that what we’re seeing right now is a game of musical chairs over which one of them it’ll be.”
Our analysis is different, and the Washington media will never understand it. The GOP’s inability to make deals is a direct result of the effectiveness of the Tea Party movement. Washington media always wants a deal between the forces for permanent government growth. For the first time in our lifetime the forces in support of actually limiting government have gained power. John Boehner and Eric Cantor understand this new dynamic. The very future of the Republican Party depends on it.
Clearly, John Boehner is frustrated by the new political realities. He wants to play golf with President Obama on the weekends and make nice with him during the week. Boehner has done his best to strong arm Republicans into forfeiting their only budget leverage and vote to raise the debt ceiling. His problem is he doesn’t have the votes, and a speaker that cannot pass legislation is doomed to be replaced.
Republican members of Congress have been flooded by messages from citizens to not raise the debt limit. They pour in daily by FAX, FedEx, mail, and telephone. Citizens intuitively understand that the solution to a debt problem is not more debt. The solution to the problem needs to come in the form of budget cuts. The Tea Party Caucus, Michele Bachmann and a movement called “Cut, Cap, Balance” are winning the battle inside the Republican Party. Tea Party leaders are threatening to bolt the Republican cause if Boehner and Cantor don’t produce an acceptable deal.
The mainstream media, as usual, are oblivious.
The rubber meets the road in a new poll by the Rasmussen organization. This poll shows that….
Paying Taxes is Optional (If You’re Part of the Ruling Class)
Basil Irwin, FloydReports.com
Well, once again, another key Obama administration official got caught not paying his taxes. This time it was US Attorney General Eric Holder. Holder along with his brother failed to pay property taxes on their childhood home in Queens, New York, which they inherited last August when their mother passed away.
You’d think these chumps would have learned their lesson about taxes by now. But paying their own taxes isn’t a priority for the Obammunists. They’re far more worried about we little people paying up. But themselves? Fuggedaboutit.
The Holders did finally cough up the bucks when the New York Post confronted them about it. Apparently Marxists will pay their taxes, but only if the press makes them.
A spokesman said the brothers “weren’t aware of the initial missed payments, which happened in the last months of their mother’s life when she was battling illness.”
Fine. But what about the subsequent payments missed by the Holder estate?
Got Stupid? Americans Embrace Obamanomics
Don Feder, GrassTopsUSA.com
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” — H.L. Mencken.
According to an April 17-19 Washington Post-ABC News Poll, a majority, or at the very least a plurality, of Americans are: 1) insane; 2) brainwashed; 3) really, really stupid; or 4) so naïve that they need to be restrained to keep them from harming themselves.
In this survey, the president has a net favorability rating of 52% (“somewhat favorable” plus “strongly favorable”), this notwithstanding that from January 2009 to April 2011 – the retail price of gas rose 69.6% (in the Chicago area – it now averages $4.17 a gallon) unemployment-benefit recipients are up 22% and the number of long-term unemployed rose 146%.
Still, more than half of Americans have a favorable opinion of the man who’s steered the ship of state during that period. On the plus side, there was no shortage of ice aboard the Titanic – as it sank.
By 45% to 44% Americans say they trust Obama over the GOP to do a better job of cutting spending to balance the budget. Okay, so we padlock the Pentagon, fire the Border Patrol – and then what?
Americans trust the president to “handle taxes,” over Republicans, by 47% to 42%. Dracula would have done an exceptional job running a blood bank.
When it comes to protecting the middle class, the public prefers the president to Republicans by 51% to 39%. As a candidate in 2008, Obama characterized Middle America as the domain of gun nuts, religious fanatics, bigots and xenophobes. So, a majority expect the president to stand up for folks for whom he has the utmost contempt. That’s logical.
Of those surveyed, only 39% think Obama’s views are “too liberal,” 8% think they’re “too conservative” (who knew the American Communist Party was that large) and 49% think the knee-jerk opinions of this doctrinaire leftist are (I kid you not) “about right.”
When it comes to tackling that pesky national debt, 69% oppose cutting Medicaid (medical welfare for the poor) and 78% oppose any reduction in Medicare (medical services for the elderly), but 72% support attacking that combination scapegoat/piggybank – taxpayers making over $250,000 per annum.
At the same time, 44% (a plurality) said the economy is getting worse, 37% (also a plurality) said jobs are getting scarcer in their area, 78% have noticed that retail prices are rising, and 71% said increases at the pump are causing a financial hardship in their household. Not to worry, the president feels their pain – on alternate weeks when he’s not on vacation, which happen to be the safest times to live in America.
What would it take to get the 57% who think our beloved president isn’t too liberal to change their minds: If he went on television Sunday mornings and read excerpts from “Das Kapital” to the kiddies, if he put George Soros on a $20 bill, if he channeled Che Guevara, if he and his pals Jeremiah Wright and Al Sharpton formed the Marxist-Leninist Chorale Group and sang a medley of old Soviet tunes?
Millions of Jobs Shipped Overseas — and How to Bring Them Back
Tom W. Pauken, FloydReports.com
On the day the International Monetary Fund predicted China will surpass the United States as the world’s largest economy in five years, this article about the gutting of America’s financial base seems more fitting than ever. Conservatives may debate his solution, but it must be given a hearing in a national discussion to restore our lagging economy — and the sooner, the better. The headlines show us, time is not on our side — The Ed.
U.S. multinational firms are shedding millions of American jobs while adding millions overseas. According to a recent Wall Street Journal story, newly released data from the U.S. Commerce Department showed that from 2000 to 2009, big firms eliminated 2.9 million jobs in the U.S. while creating 2.4 million jobs in other countries.
These new numbers underscore that the persistently high unemployment rate the U.S. currently faces is not simply the result of the most recent recession. Rather it’s part of a decade-long trend in which has there has been zero growth in private sector jobs nationally. Our onerous business tax system, with its 35 percent income tax rate and its 6.2 percent employer portion of the payroll tax, makes it clear why this is happening. This system rewards debt – which is deductible – while punitively taxing the engines of economic growth – capital investment, employment, and savings.
Over the past four decades, every other major trading country in the world has put into place a border-adjusted business consumption tax which places our companies, on average, at an 18 percent tax disadvantage with our trading competitors. Meanwhile, foreign manufacturers of goods shipped into the United States don’t have to pay our corporate taxes and simultaneously receive a tax credit on their business consumption tax back home.
Cartoon of the Day: Guess Where Obama Wants to Drill, Baby, Drill
Change You Can Believe In: Tax Hikes are Now “Tax Expenditures”
Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
Obama is a born again deficit cutter. He wants, according to his speech at George Washington University this week, to slim down nation’s deficit by a whopping four trillion dollars in the next 12 years. To achieve this miraculous goal he has a top secret weapon. It is called the “tax expenditure.”
Now tax expenditures are not new. They have been around for many years, only we knew them by a different name. The old- fashioned name which is heretofore banned from the lexicon is: tax increase.
But everyone knows tax increases are bad, so Obama and his team must be thinking that if they changed the name the voters wouldn’t notice. There is a deeper philosophical reason for the changing language, and it has to do with the fundamental difference between his vision and the Republicans’ vision for the future.
If you assume that all money belongs to the government and the people are privileged to get back some of the product of their labor, then the money doled out to the pockets of Americans must be expenditures….
Cartoon of the Day: Obama Believes You Should be Punished
