Reality is to Be Feared

indyfromaz|

Remember this when you hear liberals screaming and yelling about “fat Cat” CEO’s and their bonuses and how evil they are:
DETROIT – New General Motors Co. CEO Daniel Akerson will get the same $9 million pay package as the man he replaced, Ed Whitacre.
The automaker, which is 60.8 percent owned by the U.S. government, disclosed the pay package in a filing on Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is identical to what the company disclosed for Whitacre in February.
So don’t do as they do, do as they say and hate the “the rich” because they are evil incarnate.
Contrary to press reports that he would not be compensated, uncovered Treasury Department documents reveal President Obama’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, received a $120,830 annual salary.(WT)
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WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department plans to test futuristic iris scan technology that stores digital images of people’s eyes in a database and is considered a quicker alternative to fingerprints.
ACLU lawyer Christopher Calabrese fears that the cameras could be used covertly. “If you can identify any individual at a distance and without their knowledge, you literally allow the physical tracking of a person anywhere there’s a camera and access to the Internet,” he said.
Iris scans can be quicker than fingerprints. “You can walk up to a wall-mounted box, look at the camera, and that’s it,” Grother said.
Homeland Security will test cameras that take photos from 3 or 4 feet away, including one that works on people as they walk by, Vemury said.
If I agree with the American Communist Liberals Union (ACLU) you know the universe is endanger!
But don’t worry, Big Brother and Big Sis are not trying to track your every move and know and control everything about you. No, not at all…
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The number of people in the United States who are living in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.
Census figures for 2009 – the recession-ravaged first year of Obama’s presidency – are to be released this week, and demographers expect grim findings.
The expected poverty-rate increase – from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent – would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power. Midterm congressional elections are only weeks away.(WP)
But don’t worry,this too is also totally Bush’s Fault!
He claims that “the policies of the previous decade … that cut taxes, especially for millionaires and billionaires … ultimately culminated in a financial crisis and a terrible recession that we’re still digging out of today.”--President Obama
The president falsified the record. The Democrats’ politicization of mortgages — not Bush’s tax cuts — caused the financial crisis.
But don’t expect the Ministry of Truth to tell you that either.
If the tax cuts are to blame, why did Obama’s just-resigned Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer — whom Obama on Friday said “helped save this country from a depression” — recently co-author an article in the American Economic Review “contrary to the White House’s plan to reverse the Bush tax cuts,” as columnist Donald Lambro noted? (IBD)

And then there’s former Budget Director Pete Orszag who said the tax cuts should be kept.
So if tax cuts are so evil and wrecked the nation, then why were two of Obama’s biggest Financial Guru’s for them??
Mind you, it was only AFTER they left.
President Barack Obama talked a lot about economic recovery during his State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010, including the benefits of the economic stimulus bill passed last year.
The stimulus, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, included tax cuts for many Americans, Obama said.
“We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses,” Obama said. “We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college.”
So when he says he cut taxes (and doesn’t really or does and then raises in other ways-like Obama Care) it’s good. But if someone else proposes it, it’s just cuts for “the rich” and wrecks the country.
Say what??
“We’re going to take the next 50-some days to convince the public that’s exactly what the Republicans would do – back to the Bush policies,” White House Spokesman Gibbs said.
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“By far, Jan Brewer has shown herself to be the most unreasonable and racist governor in our country, and her discriminatory policies echo the type of prejudice that took place during the lynchings and brutality suffered by African Americans in the South,” Duarte said. “I have known families who have suffered gravely due to the policies she has so easily signed into law.”– Stella Pope Duarte, Phoenix College.

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FEAR IS HOPE
Ad Hominem: attacking the person instead of attacking his argument.
Democrats desperate to convince their base to show up at the polls in November have begun talking less about issues and more about the possibility of a “Tea Party Congress” next year.
The passage of landmark bills such as healthcare and financial regulatory reform has not triggered as much grassroots enthusiasm as initially envisioned, Democratic strategists say. And while the right is engaged this cycle, the left is deflated.

“This is a big problem,” said Democratic targeting and turnout guru Hal Malchow.

So Democrats have turned to a strategy that may be their next best bet: demonization of the “insurgent” Tea Party.
“These are not your run-of-the-mill Republicans we’re talking about here,” said one Democratic organizer working in a state with a contested Senate race this fall. “When you actually start telling voters what these candidates are about, it scares the hell out of them.”
In the past several weeks, when Democratic activists cite the ramifications of a “Tea Party Congress,” they say, more volunteers have signed up to knock on doors to preserve a Democratic-led House and Senate.
President Obama does not fire up the left as much as he did in 2008, and polls indicate independents are turning on him.
A recent Gallup survey shows that Republicans are far more enthusiastic about voting than Democrats, leading by a 50 percent to 25 percent count.
Many liberals have expressed frustration with the White House on issues ranging from the war in Afghanistan to the military prison in Guantanamo Bay — which Obama pledged to close by last January — to the lack of a public option in healthcare reform.
Uniting the party, and making sure their voters don’t stay home this fall, has become the No. 1 issue for the Democratic Party.
“The argument that we’ve made is that the Republican Party has been taken over by the Tea Party,” Democratic National Committee (DNC) spokeswoman Hari Sevugan said. “It not only energizes Democrats, but it’s the fundamental choice that independents and moderates face in the fall, too.”
Some in Democratic circles are unsure whether they can convince voters that this election is a choice instead of a referendum on Obama and the Democratic Congress. Still, there is a consensus that it’s the best game plan they have.
While then-President George W. Bush was an effective bogeyman for Democrats in 2006 and 2008, blaming him now for the nation’s economic woes has not resonated nearly as much.
University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato pointed the finger at “the failure of the Obama economic agenda” for depressing the Democratic base, but is skeptical that shifting away from issues on the campaign trail will solve the party’s turnout dilemma.
“I’m not sure trotting out a bunch of devil figures — the Tea Party congressional nominees, George Bush, [former Alaska Gov.] Sarah Palin, etc., is going to make much difference. Democrats know Obama is in power for at least two more years and can stymie a GOP Congress,” Sabato said. “But in the absence of good news on the economy, it’s worth a try to point out to Democrats who’ll be running things at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue if Democrats don’t show up to vote.”
Many Democrats, including Obama, predicted six months ago that voters would embrace the healthcare reform law when they learned more about it.
But polls show that the public is deeply divided on it. And it’s not moving many people off their couches, according to Democrats at the state and local level.

“Healthcare is largely unpopular in most places,” Malchow said. “That’s why Democrats aren’t talking about it.” (Fifty-three percent (53%) of U.S. voters now say they at least somewhat favor repeal of the new national health care law, matching the lowest level of opposition since the bill was passed by Congress in March. That includes 42% who Strongly Favor repeal.A majority has favored repeal of the legislation every single week since late March, and the bill is playing a major role in a number of congressional races across the country. Support for repeal has ranged from a low of 53%, reached once before in July, to a high of 63%.-Rasmussen)
Financial reform, and other items enacted in the 111th Congress, are likewise not lighting a fire under the Democratic base.
What is working, turnout specialists say, is talking about the “insurgent” Tea Party and how the “rising red” movement could affect the agenda in Washington in 2011.
The success of Tea Party candidates in primaries, especially candidates backed by Palin, has given Democratic operatives a key talking point. These officials have also used the Aug. 28 rally in Washington, D.C., led by Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, as a volunteer recruitment tool.
Malchow said that Tea Party-backed candidates who are further to the right than centrist and independent voters will, in the end, help the Democrats’ cause: “That’s a major motivating factor for Democrats, but I think it also depends on where you are.”
In Nevada, with a Republican nominee for Senate like Sharron Angle, Malchow said, it’s likely to be more of a motivator for Democrats than in a state like Illinois, where the party has nominated a more centrist Senate candidate in Rep. Mark Kirk.
“Base voters understand what’s at stake in this election,” said the DNC’s Sevugan. “The message that’s resonating is, do we continue to move forward or do we allow the Republicans to take us back? A slate of Republican candidates who hold very extreme positions make that choice crystal clear.”
Earlier this summer, Democrats launched an effort to cast the Republican Party and the Tea Party as one and the same.
“You don’t know where the Republican Party ends and the Tea Party begins, and they have to own that,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in July.
In an interview on MSNBC late last month, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said he expects voters to wake up to what Tea Party-backed candidates are actually running on before November.
“I think we’ve got some folk — Tea Party folk, Republicans — who are out of sync with the average American. And most Americans are in the middle,” said Cummings.
That’s a much sharper tone than Democrats were employing six months ago. In late February, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) went so far as to say that she and Tea Partiers share some of the same views. Since then, however, Democrats have identified the Tea Party as their clear adversary.
For example, Vice President Joe Biden lashed out at the “Republican Tea Party” a couple of weeks ago, predicting Democrats will retain control of both houses of Congress.
“It’s a race between Democrats and the Republican Tea Party,” Biden said.(The Hill)
Washington is today a human and systemic failure that is destroying us from within. Its profligate spending is undermining the dollar — and, according to the International Monetary Fund, it is risking a U.S. sovereign debt crisis. According to Lenin, “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than debauching the currency.”
The eminent Samuel Huntington observed that Washington is — through the Third World orientation of its immigration policies — deliberately destroying the linguistic, cultural and creedal glue that defines and holds the nation together. Research by Harvard professor Robert Putnam associates high levels of government-created “diversity” with civic dissonance and decline.
Washington makes tax slaves out of one in four Americans, forcing them to pay nearly all the income tax while others pay little or none. It taxes too heavily in the dumbest way possible that does the maximum economic damage (about $3 for every $1 of tax collected), costing everyone jobs and incomes. Taxation is an economic poison that spreads quickly.
And when government spends a dollar, the economic benefit is typically between zero and 60 cents, thereby digging the hole still deeper with a loss on each transaction. No wonder “stimulus” doesn’t work.
Washington discriminates among us according to race and gender, takes our money and property and gives it to union bosses and other friends on its political Facebook, and by forcing us to fill out millions of government forms, annually confiscates 10 billion hours of our time.
It invades our schools, raises costs, messes with students’ minds and morals, and lowers educational quality. It scorns and interferes with traditional Americans in the exercise of their religion — and it forces everyone to fight through a jungle of federal regulations just to live our daily lives.
Washington has by fiat reduced the earnings on our savings accounts to near zero and given the differential to banks and speculators. It has taken $2.5 trillion out of our Social Security Trust Fund and “replaced” the money with federal IOUs that it can pay only by imposing additional taxes on us. What a cruel hoax.
A soon-to-be-published analysis of historical data (by Gary and Aldona Robbins) shows how government ineptitude has for decades been increasing the price of health care. ObamaCare is the final atrocity. It will not be tolerated.
Washington constantly intervenes in our free-market economy, cannibalizing vital parts and impairing its ability to provide jobs and raise living standards. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of commerce and trade may soon stop altogether. Absent that productive genius, what will we do then? Rely on government? What a hoot. Washington is broke and produces nothing.
The Great Recession tells us that government is better at creating problems (such as deficits, debt, unemployment and the housing bubble) than it is at providing solutions. And President Obama proves daily that profligate spending really is a sin: It kills jobs.
Instead of apologizing to the world for America, Obama should apologize to us. His administration seems unfortunately to have lost both its economic mind and its moral compass. (IBD)

But instead, you get it’s Bush’s Fault, fear the “tea party” as radicals and nutjobs, and spending EVEN MORE money than we have will solve everything!
I’ll give Gov. Deval Patrick (MA) the last word: “It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t, but . . . it’s a free country,” Patrick said on the “Jim & Margery Show” on WTKK-FM. “You know, you got to, you got to respect that freedom.”

The Quintessential Partisan

More of David Limbaugh (Daily Caller): President Obama is the quintessential partisan, for sure, but he doesn’t reserve his vitriol for Republican politicians. He’ll turn on anyone who stands in his way, and he’ll make it personal through bullying, ridicule, and demonizing. Obama believes he can use his presidential bully pulpit to say whatever he wants about anyone or any group, whether foreign leaders, bankers, or tea party protesters.
Consistent with his narcissistic proclivities, Obama is angrily intolerant of his critics. He dismissed President Bush’s rare criticism by snapping, “We won.” Likewise, he lashed out at Senator John McCain for objecting to his stance on Iran, declaring, “Only I’m the president of the United States . . . and I’ll carry out my responsibilities the way I think is appropriate”—completely ignoring the substance of McCain’s criticism.
This is a hallmark of Obama’s governing style: he takes things personally and keeps score. He exudes a sense of entitlement about his agenda, expecting legislators to vote as he commands, as opposed to, say, their consciences or the wishes of their constituents.
For Obama, it’s more than just a matter of political power. There’s also his egotistical sense that he is absolutely right about everything, that everyone else is wrong, and that if given enough time, he can persuade the rest of the rubes of the superiority of his positions.

It has been my experience, online and in the media (say MSDNC), that the more Progressive Left they are they more that condescending snottiness and absolute Right of God comes out. The more left they are the more they are The Insufferably Superior Left. And thus, they are utterly incapable of being wrong and even if you can prove it, they will just attack you like a rabid raptor.
In their heads there is no such thing as them being wrong. EVER!
An easy test: Ask one of these nuts when will it not be George Bush’s fault?
Get out a wetsuit because the dripping condescending snottiness  and Bush Derangement Syndrome will flow like the flood of the century!
And don’t expect the Mainstream Media, The Ministry of Truth, to be there to protect you they are ideological now and they’re not news reporters. And they are in favor of Obama’s agenda and so they are going to disregard the kind of things he does and will make you (or Bush) the cause not him.
They still love him. Some on the far-far left are mad, it’s true, but that’s because he’s not been to far left ENOUGH  for their tastes!
He didn’t get the Public Option. He didn’t get Cap & Trade in full. He hasn’t redistributed the wealth enough for them. He hasn’t crushed Wall Street and the “rich” enough for them.
Yes, they are that radically out of touch with reality.

We’ve seen how he attributed the public’s repudiation of his agenda via the Massachusetts Senate election to his failure to sufficiently explain his healthcare position—though he had talked ad nauseam on the issue. But it was true of other issues as well—even strong moral issues for which there would never be a consensus, as with his attempt to confront pro-life forces at Notre Dame.
He took the same tack with the issue of homosexuality. At a White House celebration of Gay Pride Month—a controversial act in itself—Obama said he aspired to persuade all Americans to accept homosexuality—as if the issue were simply about “accepting homosexuals,” and that anyone opposing special legal classifications for homosexuality was prejudiced, discriminatory, and as Obama claimed, possessed of “worn arguments and old attitudes.” He added, “There are good and decent people in this country who don’t yet fully embrace their gay brothers and sisters—not yet.”
As a candidate, Obama usually told voters what he thought they wanted to hear. He told an audience in Las Vegas he wanted to help “not just the folks who own casinos but the folks who are serving in casinos.” But after becoming president he wasn’t quite as solicitous. In one of his many anti-capitalist riffs he took a cheap shot at CEOs at a townhall meeting in Elkhart, Indiana, in February 2009. “You can’t take a trip to Las Vegas or down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.” Obama’s careless statement elicited a strong reaction from Las Vegas businessmen, many pointing out that if their business suffers, the first and hardest hit are the front line workers—the people at the front desk, the bell staff, and the taxi drivers, precisely the people Obama courted during the campaign.
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority reported that more than 400 conventions and business meetings scheduled in the city had been canceled, translating into 111,800 guests and more than 250,000 “room nights,” costing the city’s economy more than $100 million, apart from lost gaming revenue.
And despite British Petroleum’s assurances that it was “absolutely” responsible for the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama unleashed on BP a non-stop barrage of verbal abuse. Using language not usually heard from a U.S. president, he told NBC’s Today Show that he consults experts about the spill to find out “whose ass to kick.”
Even Obama’s supporters recognized he was resorting to sheer intimidation. As Democratic strategist James Carville noted, “It looks as if President Obama applied a little old-school Chicago persuasion to the oil executives.” But American presidents, of course, are not supposed to resort to this kind of outright thuggery to get their way. As Conn Carroll remarked on the Heritage Foundation’s blog, “Making ‘offers you can’t refuse’ may be a great way to run the mob, but it is no way to run a country.”

And the President oh-so-political Oil Drilling Moratorium (even now that the leak has been plugged it continues) has cost 10′s of thousands of jobs and continues to hurt the Gulf States, especially Louisiana.
But he doesn’t care. He has the backing of his environmentalist apparatchiks. So what does he care about jobs lost in a recession due directly to his meddling. It’s not his fault!
He’s scoring points for his agenda.

And leaving other apparatchiks to do the job for him also, Like the EPA and there declaration that “that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels poses a threat to human health and welfare, a designation that set the federal government on the path toward regulating of emissions from power plants, factories, automobiles and other major sources.” (see also: http://indyfromaz.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/stop-breathing-save-the-planet/) statement and now apparently Connecticut’s attorney general and Democratic nominee for the Senate, Richard Blumenthal, is working to get courts to declare “cap and trade” regulations the law of the land. Blumenthal’s suit, Connecticut v. American Electric Power, is the most prominent of a handful of “climate change” lawsuits filed by environmental activists, state attorneys general and trial lawyers. These suits threaten to impose a steep tax on the American economy, with no input from our national elected representatives.
In 2004, Connecticut, along with seven other states, New York City and three environmental groups, filed suit against five companies responsible for “approximately one-quarter of the U.S. electric power sector’s carbon dioxide emissions.”
Their lawsuit sought to hold the companies “jointly and severally liable for contributing to an ongoing public nuisance, global warming” and asked the court to force each company “to abate its contribution to the nuisance by capping its emissions of carbon dioxide and then reducing those emissions by a specified percentage each year.”(IBD)

So Congress doesn’t have the stomach to do it, the Progressives will just use their judicial apparatchiks to force it down your throat!!
The Bully that never gives up.

Based on his behavior as president, it is clear he truly believes his own hype. He behaves and governs as though he has been sheltered all his life, or at least since he was a young adult, living in a bizarre bubble, hearing only positive reinforcement and made to believe in his own supernatural powers. This is a major reason he cannot bear opposition; this is a major reason he is not, in the end, a man of the people and deferential to their will, but a top-down autocrat determined to permanently change America and its place in the world despite intense resistance from the American people themselves.
David Limbaugh:  This is a guy who’s taken over private companies. This is a guy who — contravening the rule of law — allocates and pledges $140 billion to the IMF when Congress specifically said you cannot do that without our authority.
And he said — with an Orwellian argument, I can — this is foreign policy, I can divert $140 billion to the IMF for wealth redistribution in third world countries. Nothing to do with what the IMF was originally been set up for.
He can go after Gerald Walpin who is an IG for AmeriCorps because he uncovered fraud on the part of Obama’s friends and so he fires him without notice in total contravention of the rule of law there.
It’s a means to an end for him. He appoints judges who will rewrite the law. He will circumvent Congress when it comes to environmental policy by having his EPA declare carbon dioxide a toxic pollutant.
He will go out and thwart the secured creditors’ legal rights under the law — their rights under the law and favor the unions who are unsecured creditors, give them 50 percent on the dollar. Give the secured creditors 20 percent and then slam and slander the lawyer and slander them as speculators when they’re just trying to enforce their own rights under the law. (FOX)

“I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” Obama told ABC’s “World News” anchor Diane Sawyer last year.

And in his mind, and The Ministry of Truth, he is really good. Look at all the “legislative victories” he’s had!!
So what if 60+% of the people hate them. He won! That’s all that matters.
Like he cares.  As long as he’s right and the Ministry of Truth tell him he’s right and cover up any gaffes or “misquotes” he’s perfectly fine with doing whatever he wants.
After all, as he told Sen. McCain during the Health Care roundtable, He won the election! Get over it


But there’s also the fact that he’s tone-deaf. In addition to not caring what we think, he’s also tone-deaf because he has no clue after he passed – - he crammed Obamacare through he says, I’m going to continue to fight for the American people.
Oh, you are? So 24 percent of the people support what you’re doing and you’re fighting for us? How oblivious.

And how many times has he said that he will focus on jobs, then a shiny object like Health Care or Oil or some other Liberal fantasy distracts him and he just wanders off on vacation…
We either go full blown toward socialism, Marxism, Statism or we turn back and restore our founding principles. This upcoming election in November will tell the tale.
Freedom matters.

The Ideological Deficit

The Democrats have found a new “religion”.
Complain about spending too much, only if it’s against their ideology.
And for no other reason.
Take the “Bush” Tax cuts.
The democrats know that the tax increases from this will hurt the economy badly, but because it’s Bush, they can’t stomach extending them so they play the “deficit” card which is hilarious since they just spent weeks bashing the Republicans for being “mean” and “heartless” because they wanted the unemployment benefits extension paid for instead of adding to the deficit!
In the end, the Democrats just passed it anyhow.
So they can raise the deficit for unemployment benefits (now going over 100 weeks straight with the average being 37) but keeping a tax cut with Satan’s name attached to it is not worth adding to their massive spending.
New estimates from the White House on Friday predict the budget deficit will reach a record $1.47 trillion this year. The government is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar it spends.
That’s taking partisan ideologicial politics to a new low.
The Democrats are effectively saying, if it doesn’t benefit them politically it’s not worth doing.
I also think they want to saddle the Republicans with it.
They know they are going to lose massively in November so what better way to play it than stick your opponent with the mess and then when the 2012 tax season rolls around and people are hit full-on in the face with the 2011 income tax increases you can have “sympathy” for them in the 2012 Presidential election and make it look like it was all the Republicans fault.
Or Bush’s fault.
Now is that too cynical?  I think not.

Fiscal Policy: Many voters are looking forward to 2011, hoping a new Congress will put the country back on the right track. But unless something’s done soon, the new year will also come with a raft of tax hikes — including a return of the death tax — that will be real killers.
Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.
But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.
Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn’t the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it’s not just the rich who will pay.
The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.
Yes, it raises taxes on anyone who pays taxes, Period. Even the “poor”. So I guess he wants  to pander to the 47% who don’t pay taxes, women, and minorities in his apparatchik class and everyone else can just screw themselves…
But the damage doesn’t stop there.
The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.
Both the cap-gains and dividend taxes will go up further in 2013 as the health care reform adds a 3.8% Medicare levy for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than $250,000. Other tax hikes include: halving the child tax credit to $500 from $1,000 and fixing the standard deduction for couples at the same level as it is for single filers.
Letting the Bush cuts expire will cost taxpayers $115 billion next year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and $2.6 trillion through 2020.
But even more tax headaches lie ahead. This “second wave” of hikes, as Americans for Tax Reform puts it, are designed to pay for ObamaCare and include:
The Medicine Cabinet Tax. Americans, says ATR, “will no longer be able to use health savings account, flexible spending account, or health reimbursement pretax dollars to purchase nonprescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).”
The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. “This provision of ObamaCare,” according to ATR, “increases the additional tax on nonmedical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10% to 20%, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10%.”
Brand Name Drug Tax. Makers and importers of brand-name drugs will be liable for a tax of $2.5 billion in 2011. The tax goes to $3 billion a year from 2012 to 2016, then $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018. Beginning in 2019 it falls to $2.8 billion and stays there. And who pays the new drug tax? Patients, in the form of higher prices.
Economic Substance Doctrine. ATR reports that “The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks ‘economic substance.’”
A third and final (for now) wave, says ATR, consists of the alternative minimum tax’s widening net, tax hikes on employers and the loss of deductions for tuition:
• The Tax Policy Center, no right-wing group, says that the failure to index the AMT will subject 28.5 million families to the tax when they file next year, up from 4 million this year.
• “Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly deduct, or ‘depreciate’) equipment purchases up to $250,000,” says ATR. “This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be ‘depreciated.’”
• According to ATR, there are “literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place,” plus the loss of some tax credits. The research and experimentation tax credit will be the biggest loss, “but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.”
• The deduction for tuition and fees will no longer be available and there will be limits placed on education tax credits. Teachers won’t be able to deduct their classroom expenses and employer-provided educational aid will be restricted. Thousands of families will no longer be allowed to deduct student loan interest.
Then there’s the tax on Americans who decline to buy health care insurance (the tax the administration initially said wasn’t a tax but now argues in court that it is) plus a 3.8% Medicare tax beginning in 2013 on profits made in real estate transactions by wealthier Americans.
Not all Americans may fully realize what’s in store come Jan. 1. But they should have a pretty good idea by the mid-term elections, and members of Congress might take note of our latest IBD/TIPP Poll (summarized above).
Fifty-one percent of respondents favored making the Bush cuts permanent vs. 28% who didn’t. Republicans were more than 4 to 1 and Independents more than 2 to 1 in favor. Only Democrats were opposed, but only by 40%-38%.
The cuts also proved popular among all income groups — despite the Democrats’ oft-heard assertion that Bush merely provided “tax breaks for the wealthy.” Fact is, Bush cut taxes for everyone who paid them, and the cuts helped the nation recover from a recession and the worst stock-market crash since 1929.
Maybe, just maybe, Americans remember that — and will not forget come Nov. 2. (IBD)


And there’s always the Tax that isn’t a Tax because it’s a “penalty” but in court it’s a Tax– The Health Care Mandate.


After all, known communist and fired “green Jobs czar” Van Jones recently said:
While the federal government sinks deeper into debt than any time since World War II, former White House “green jobs” adviser Anthony Van Jones said it was time to stop worrying about budget deficits and pressure Washington to take more money from American businesses to fund larger social and infrastructure projects.
“This is a rich country. We have plenty of money, and if you don’t believe me, ask Haliburton,” Jones told a group of progressive bloggers and activists at the Netroots Nation (Think Far Left Hatefest) convention Friday. “There’s plenty of money out there; don’t fall into the trap of this whole deficit argument.”
“The only question is how to spend it,” he added.

Speaking of spending remember TARP, that bailout that was supposed to save the universe and create jobs?
Well, not so much.
How’s that Troubled Asset Relief Program going? Not so well. A review of TARP found that homeowners aren’t avoiding foreclosure and the decisions to close car dealerships were politically based.
The Home Affordable Modification Program, infused last year with $50 billion in TARP money by the Obama administration, was supposed to help 3 million to 4 million mortgage holders with their problem loans.
But according to a government audit, it has failed to “put an appreciable dent in the foreclosure filings.”
Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the $787 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, told Congress on Wednesday that fewer than 400,000 homeowners have had their mortgages permanently modified under the program.
“It’s just not a program that’s working for homeowners,” Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of a panel charged with overseeing the bailout, also told Congress on Wednesday.
“It’s not a program in some cases that’s working for investors. And most importantly, it’s not a program that’s working for the economy over all.”
Warren, who resides on the other side of the idea spectrum from us, said the problem with the program is “It’s too slow. It’s too small.”
But at least we have $20 Billion dollars in signs touting how great it is (each sign cost $10,000 a piece).
Her position is based on a faulty assumption: that the federal government, which is rife with fraud, waste and corruption, is able to effectively implement even a small program. She is expecting an unwieldy bureaucracy to do something that it cannot — and should not — do.
Another function of TARP, the auto dealership closing program, also took criticism in the review. More than 2,000 dealerships were closed as a cost-cutting measure in Washington’s bailout of Chrysler and General Motors. But the closings weren’t business decisions. They were political.
And they cost jobs.
“Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls — all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions’ broader economic impact,” said Barofsky’s 45-page report.
According to the audit, the Treasury Department, which administers TARP, simply failed to show how the dealership closings were “either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery.”
The Barofsky report says some GM “dealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships.”
Further underscoring TARP’s institutional problems is Barofsky’s finding that the government has been throwing taxpayers’ money at the country’s financial system that it wasn’t authorized to spend.
“Indeed, the current outstanding balance of overall federal support for the nation’s financial system has actually increased more than 23% over the past year, from approximately $3 trillion to $3.7 trillion — the equivalent of a fully deployed TARP program,” says the report.
The money has been allocated “largely without congressional action, even as the banking crisis has, by most measures, abated from its most acute phases.” Worse, much of the unauthorized expenditures was doled out to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the quasi-government mortgage institutions that are largely responsible for the 2007-08 financial meltdown.
Fannie and Freddie were explicitly excluded from the “financial reform” package.
It’s no coincidence that TARP has been a big part of one of the ugliest economic eras in American history.
We wouldn’t be surprised if historians one day look back and find that TARP was a significant contributor to the depth and length of the current slump.
Unless you’re a Journo-List Media biased ideological “journalists” or historian that distorts the facts to suit Big Brother’s Ideological Agenda that is.

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Beatle Maniac

Pro-SB1070 Rally in 107 Degree Heat!! (don’t expect this on any National Leftist Media):
http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_phoenix_metro/central_phoenix/rally-to-hit-capitol-in-favor-of-arizona-immigration-law
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Sir Paul McCartney’s cheap shot aimed at former President George W. Bush at a White House event on Wednesday has prompted House Minority Leader John Boehner to demand an apology from the Beatle. McCartney literally gushed over President Obama throughout his East Room concert.  “Getting this prize would just be good enough, but getting it from this president…” McCartney said letting his praise trail off as if there were vast volumes left unsaid.
The prize McCartney was given is the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, a lifetime achievement award bestowed by the Library of Congress.
McCartney ended the evening taking a baseless cheap shot at former President George W. Bush.
“After the last eight years, it’s great to have a President who knows what a library is,” McCartney quipped.
When did decorum go out of style?

Decorum from the Left, even the British Left, why? They’re too full of their own greatness for that!

We all know the first rule of polite society: If you can’t think of something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all. In certain bien pensant circles, however, there is a corollary: If you can’t think of anything nice to say — say something bad about George W. Bush.

And the more juvenile it is, the better.

“Like millions of other Americans, I have always had a good impression of Paul McCartney and thought of him as a classy guy, but I was surprised and disappointed by the lack of grace and respect he displayed at the White House,” Boehner told HUMAN EVENTS.  “I hope he’ll apologize to the American people for his conduct which demeaned him, the White House and President Obama.” McCartney is the third recipient of the Gershwin Prize. Hailing from England and having earned no university degrees of his own, the Beatle may not know W. was the first American president to earn a master’s degree in business administration. (The fact the MBA is from Harvard really irks the left.) Not to mention Bush is married to a librarian.

Beatlejuice not Beetlemania would be preferable.

But anyone who has read very many of my blogs or been to message boards where the Left hangs out know all about the Narcissistic Personality Disorders that thrive on the Left.

And the immature, kindergarten-level cheap shots passed off as clever and witty, and oh so, wonderful.

But Bush Derangement Syndrome from a Brit is interesting.

The Bush administration oversaw creation of a federal grant program to train a new generation of librarians. It’s called the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program, and it has awarded $130 million to date. During Bush’s presidency, federal funding for public libraries grew from $163.2 million per year to $212.2 million per year – a 30 percent increase.

In mocking the boorishness of a former U.S. president, Sir Paul, and those who roared at his remark, unfortunately demonstrated their own.

But, as we (who are not Liberals) know, facts almost never, ever matter to Liberals. Especially, if it gets in the way of their agenda or gets in the way of a snarky dig at Bush or a Republican, but especially George W. Bush.

While I was not the greatest of  fans of Bush, mostly because in his last years he was the Fiscal Socialist that the Democrats were and that was just wrong and helped cause this mess in the first place.

But Liberals are all about “civility” when it’s about them, but when it’s not, they are the most uncivil of political animals.

You’re supposed to cut them a break, it’s not big deal, when it’s them.

But when it’s not, it’s the End of Civilization as they want it so they come at you like a mob of self-important raptors to tear you to pieces and civility is the very last thing they will give you.

Paul McCartney should take this “sad song and make it better” by heeding the opening lyrics of his song “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” (“We’re so sorry, Uncle Albert. We’re so sorry if we caused you any pain”) and issue a public apology to President Bush and the American people.

But you know he won’t and the Left will be left snickering like kids on a playground, “Did you you hear what Paul said…” heehehehehehehehehehehehe…