The Fakeover

Our dear President is out on the Campaign trail yet again, touting how great he is. And he saved America! Rejoice!
It’s Hope 2.0!
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They passed a sweeping Financial Reform bill. But like the Health Care bill where one the biggest problems was totally ignored for political reasons, Tort Reform, in the Financial Reform bill, Fannie & Freddie and the shadow of the subprime mortgages still out there, was ignored.
The Democrats, who created this mess, want to ignore the 800 lb Gorilla Cancer in the body.
With good reason, they were the main force behind creating it!

You can’t talk about the housing crisis or reforms without talking about the affordable-housing goals HUD slapped on Fannie and Freddie. That is, unless you’re Tim Geithner.
The Treasury secretary hosted a summit Tuesday to discuss redesigning the mortgage-finance system — 75% of which is still controlled by Fannie and Freddie, which are still bleeding billions at taxpayer expense.
Geithner vowed to fundamentally “change” the failed government-sponsored mortgage giants. Yet, suspiciously, he didn’t offer how. Nor did he explain why they lowered their underwriting standards and collapsed under the weight of subprime loans and securities. So here’s a refresher:
• In 1996, as part of Clinton housing policy, HUD required that 42% of Fannie’s and Freddie’s mortgage financing go to “underserved” borrowers with unproven or damaged credit.
• To help them meet that goal, HUD, their regulator, authorized them to relax their lending criteria.
• HUD also authorized them to buy subprime securities that included loans to uncreditworthy borrowers.
• Unhappy with the results — despite Fannie and Freddie committing trillions in risky low-income loans — HUD in 2000 raised its affordable-housing target again, this time to 50%.
• By 2008, HUD’s target had topped out at 56%. And Fannie and Freddie had drowned in a toxic soup of bad subprime paper.
HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan insists that affordable-housing goals aren’t to blame. “We should be careful not to learn the wrong lesson from this experience,” he said, “and sacrifice an important feature of the current system: wide access to mortgage credit.”
This is revisionist history. Fannie and Freddie e-mails confirm that executives then were under huge pressure to meet “HUD goals.”
But as Orwell warned, whoever controls the present controls the past. And right now, the people who pushed Fannie and Freddie — along with our entire financial system — off the cliff in the name of “affordable housing” are running the show.
Just look at some of the experts Geithner invited to his Potemkin summit. Like ex-Clinton aide Ellen Seidman, who became head of the Office of Thrift Supervision. She aggressively enforced Clinton’s beefed-up Community Reinvestment Act, which codified the “flexible” underwriting that Fannie and Freddie adopted.
You can’t talk about the housing crisis or reforms without talking about the affordable-housing goals HUD slapped on Fannie and Freddie. That is, unless you’re Tim Geithner.
The Treasury secretary hosted a summit Tuesday to discuss redesigning the mortgage-finance system — 75% of which is still controlled by Fannie and Freddie, which are still bleeding billions at taxpayer expense.
Geithner vowed to fundamentally “change” the failed government-sponsored mortgage giants. Yet, suspiciously, he didn’t offer how. Nor did he explain why they lowered their underwriting standards and collapsed under the weight of subprime loans and securities. So here’s a refresher:
• In 1996, as part of Clinton housing policy, HUD required that 42% of Fannie’s and Freddie’s mortgage financing go to “underserved” borrowers with unproven or damaged credit.
• To help them meet that goal, HUD, their regulator, authorized them to relax their lending criteria.
• HUD also authorized them to buy subprime securities that included loans to uncreditworthy borrowers.
• Unhappy with the results — despite Fannie and Freddie committing trillions in risky low-income loans — HUD in 2000 raised its affordable-housing target again, this time to 50%.
• By 2008, HUD’s target had topped out at 56%. And Fannie and Freddie had drowned in a toxic soup of bad subprime paper.
HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan insists that affordable-housing goals aren’t to blame. “We should be careful not to learn the wrong lesson from this experience,” he said, “and sacrifice an important feature of the current system: wide access to mortgage credit.”
This is revisionist history. Fannie and Freddie e-mails confirm that executives then were under huge pressure to meet “HUD goals.”
But as Orwell warned, whoever controls the present controls the past. And right now, the people who pushed Fannie and Freddie — along with our entire financial system — off the cliff in the name of “affordable housing” are running the show.
Just look at some of the experts Geithner invited to his Potemkin summit. Like ex-Clinton aide Ellen Seidman, who became head of the Office of Thrift Supervision. She aggressively enforced Clinton’s beefed-up Community Reinvestment Act, which codified the “flexible” underwriting that Fannie and Freddie adopted.
Seidman argued that Fannie’s and Freddie’s support for “low-income and minority communities” — especially now amid a wave of foreclosures — is “absolutely critical.” She wants government to take an even larger role in pushing housing for “underserved markets.”

The “underserved” were the poor, and minorities, that couldn’t pay them anyhow. But what the hell, if you can get a million dollar house with a multi-thousand dollar mortgage and a job at 7-11 for nothing down, why not.
Let’s buy some votes. Then when it all blows up in our face, blame it on “the rich” and George W. Bush!!
Yeah, that’s the ticket!!


Comment on the article: It’s simple! Underserved means undeserved but we will give it to you anyway in exchange for your vote. Problem is it works, for the short term but with h*** to pay in the long term.
Seidman argued that Fannie’s and Freddie’s support for “low-income and minority communities” — especially now amid a wave of foreclosures — is “absolutely critical.” She wants government to take an even larger role in pushing housing for “underserved markets.”
“The private sector will not do it on its own,” Seidman said, “and we should just stop having that debate.”
Excuse us, but homes aren’t a right. People who lost their homes can go back to renting. There’s no shame in that. The shame came when government pushed them into homes they couldn’t afford. And the housing bubble it created hurt everybody in the end.
Echoing Seidman, Geithner asserted that whatever replaces Fannie and Freddie must continue to “provide access to affordable housing for lower-income Americans” and to guarantee loans.
In other words, Fannie and Freddie aren’t going anywhere. They’ll just be absorbed into the government, most likely Treasury or HUD, or both.
Why must taxpayers continue subsidizing homeownership through a government-guaranteed secondary mortgage market run by a government-protected duopoly?
Within the proper framework, we’re confident that private firms can originate and securitize mortgages more efficiently — and do so without the politically injected risk or taxpayer liability.
Wells Fargo, for one, would gradually replace Freddie and Fannie with private “mortgage conduits” that buy loans on the primary market and roll them into a common mortgage-backed security.
They’d assume the risk on the underlying mortgages, while the government would guarantee only the MBSes. To protect taxpayers, the conduits would pay into an insurance fund.
The plan maximizes the use of private capital while limiting Washington’s role to assuming catastrophic risk.
Other charter privileges enjoyed by Fannie and Freddie would be eliminated, including their Treasury line of credit, state and local tax exemptions, and weak capital requirements.
Above all, the plan would curb HUD’s interference in the mortgage market. No more unrealistically high affordable-housing goals. No more NINJA — no income, no job or assets — loans.
After years of dissembling and denial, Rep. Barney Frank has finally come out. He now says bankrupt government mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “should be abolished.” Better late than never.
‘There were people in this society who for economic and, frankly, social reasons can’t and shouldn’t be homeowners,” Frank said in an interview with the Fox Business Network and sounding a lot more like an elephant than a donkey. “I think we should, particularly, stop this assumption that you put everybody into homeownership.”
After years of blaming heartless Republicans and Wall Street for the crisis caused by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — and their predominantly Democratic supporters in Congress — it’s refreshing to hear a member of the Democratic Party admit his mistakes.
It’s especially true of Frank, who, more than any other elected official, championed the cause of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Indeed, Frank is most responsible for stopping GSE reform in the early 2000s, at a time when such a move might have prevented the financial meltdown.
Maybe Frank, like so many others in his party, is feeling the heat in this November’s election. Democrats’ popularity is plunging after years of economic incompetence that has left America’s once-thriving economy a shambles.
But give him his due: Frank’s comments mark a major departure.
In 2000, when Rep. Richard Baker proposed more oversight for the GSEs, Frank called concerns about Fannie and Freddie “overblown,” claiming there was “no federal liability whatsoever.”
In 2002, again, Frank said: “I do not regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems. I regard them as assets.”
In 2003, he repeated himself in opposing reform, saying he did not “regard Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as problems.”
Even after a multibillion dollar accounting scandal hit Freddie Mac just a month after those remarks, Frank insisted nothing was wrong. “I do not think we are facing any kind of crisis,” he said.
By 2004, Fannie had its own accounting scandal. Frank again insisted it posed no threat to the U.S. Treasury. Even if the two went belly-up, he said, “I think Wall Street will get over it.”
Of course, he had it exactly backward. We’ve already spent $148 billion of taxpayer money on the two losers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it will ultimately cost taxpayers $389 billion to bail them out. Even that may be too little; at least one private estimate put the final toll at $1 trillion.
No surprise here. Even today, more than half of all mortgages are funded or underwritten by Fannie and Freddie. They hold more than $5 trillion of the $10.7 trillion or so in total U.S. mortgages.
We’ve spent a lot of money for Barney Frank’s education in financial reality. Today, he’s basically saying he and his party were wrong all along.
That’s a good start. But how about an apology? Or even a frank admission that his party’s indefatigable support of Fannie and Freddie — which, prodded by the Community Reinvestment Act, created and funded the massive subprime market that later collapsed — was to blame for our multitrillion dollar meltdown and the loss of millions of jobs?
Others are edging in that direction. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner this week held a conference on Fannie’s and Freddie’s future, and he too seems chastened. “We will not support returning Fannie and Freddie to the role they played before conservatorship, where they fought to take market share from private competitors while enjoying the privilege of government support,” he said.
That, too, is good to hear. As we have advocated for years — since 1996, to be exact — Fannie and Freddie should be dismantled or privatized.
We hope actions match the rhetoric — that Geithner’s “conference” on Fannie and Freddie wasn’t just political window dressing before November’s midterm elections.
Let’s get government out of the business of encouraging homeownership, an undertaking at which it has failed miserably.
Now that the idea is dead, let’s bury it once and for all.
As late as 2008, after the tide of losses and foreclosures washed away Fannie’s and Freddie’s remaining capital, Frank was adamant that it was all Wall Street’s fault: “The private sector got us into this mess … the government has to get us out of it.” (IBD)

But dear, Barney, it was thy.

“Slowly but surely, we are moving in the right direction. We’re on the right track,” Obama told a group of about 40 in the backyard of Rhonda and Joe Weithman’s home, a Cape Cod on quiet E. Kanawha Avenue in Clintonville,OH. “After 18 months, I have never been more confident that our nation is headed in the right direction,” Obama said.
Rasmussen:  Twenty-eight percent (28%) of Likely Voters say the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken the week ending Sunday, August 15.
While down slightly from the last two weeks, confidence in the nation’s current course has ranged from 27% to 35% since last July. Following Congress’ passage of the national health care bill in late March, the number of voters who said the country was heading in the right direction peaked at 35%, the highest level of optimism measured since early September 2009.
Fifty-four percent (54%) of Democrats feel the country is heading in the right direction. Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Republicans and 77% of voters not affiliated with either political party feel the country is heading down the wrong track.
Sixty-seven percent (67%) of all voters say the country is heading down the wrong track, up two points from last week.
So let’s review: 60+% are against the Health Care Bill. 60+% are for a secure border. 60+% are against the Ground Zero Mosque. 60+% are saying we are on the “wrong track”.
Sixty percent (60%) of U.S. voters say most members of Congress don’t care what their constituents think, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
So that’s why Democrats think they are doing a good job!


After all, your alternative is… REPUBLICANS! <> and we all know that is the way to Hell itself!
Personally, I’d rather just have Conservatives. Which leaves out Democrats anyhow but also leaves out the RINOs.
What we don’t need now is to go from a Progressive Cancer to a RINO Virus.
But we really don’t need is more government “involvement”.

The Rise of The Eco-Migrant

The nuts on The Left are really getting desperate.

Global Warming crashed and burned with Climate gate where the corruption on the issue was exposed.
But the Left, losing on the immigration issue has come up with a new one.
If you don’t love illegal immigrants now, you’ll have even more because of GLOBAL WARMING!
So if we embrace global warming and illegal immigration we will be just fine.


Brought to you by National Geographic:

Disputes over illegal Mexican immigrants are already heating up in the United States, thanks in part to a new Arizona immigration law.
But global warming could bring the immigration issue to a boiling point in the coming decades, if a new study holds true.
According a new computer model, a total of nearly seven million additional Mexicans could emigrate to the U.S. by 2080 as a result of reduced crop yields brought about by a hotter, drier climate—assuming other factors influencing immigration remain unchanged.
“The model shows that climate-driven refugees could be a big deal in the future,” said study co-author Michael Oppenheimer, an atmospheric scientist at Princeton University in New Jersey.
Study co-author Oppenheimer acknowledged there are many uncertainties in his team’s model. But it’s important for scientists to investigate climate change-induced migration quantitatively, he said.
“This is the first time anybody’s built a model to do this,” Oppenheimer said. “It’s a simplification, and there are a lot of assumptions, but it’s the start of a learning process. As we learn more, the model will improve, and the numbers will get more reliable.”

You know what they say about assumptions.
And we’re just shooting in the dark and it’s complete speculation and it’s over simplified.
BUT YOU MUST TAKE IT SERIOUSLY!

“The takeaway message for me of this study is that there is indeed a relationship between changes in crop yield and the movement of people,” Smit said. “And to the extent that future climate change will introduce more of those stresses on yields, we can expect more pressures on the movement of people.”

It’s the birth of the ECO-Migrant!!
No Illegal Immigrants. No more Undocumented Immigrants. No more just plain Immigrants. They are now ECO-Migrants!!
Oh Dear!
Now if we deny them we are harming them AND the environment at the same time!!
OH NO!!!
Where’s my barf bag?….

In some sense, it may not matter whether the study is right or wrong.
The University of Ottawa’s McLeman, for example, argues that many of the things the U.S. could do to help Mexico adapt to global warming will also help improve the quality of life for many of Mexico’s poor.
“A lot of the things that we could be doing are things that we should be doing anyway,” he said.
“Even if it turns out that our future projections about climate change impacts aren’t right, it’s still a good investment. I don’t see any downside to it.”

Come down here and say that ya Canuck!

So it doesn’t matter if we are right or wrong, we should just do it anyways!
But if we can scare people into doing it, so much the better! It’s the right thing to do.

Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission said Monday it is sending inspectors to U.S. border crossings to monitor deportations that might result if Arizona’s new immigration law goes into effect as planned Thursday.
The law is being challenged by the U.S. government in court, but the federal judge hearing the case hasn’t indicated whether she might agree to the challenge’s request that the measure be put on hold.
The government’s rights commission said monitors will be stationed at border gates in Tijuana across from California, Nogales next to Arizona and Ciudad Juarez and Reynosa across from Texas to ensure migrants are treated properly.
“The implementation of the Arizona Law SB1070 represents a threat to migrants’ full exercise of their human rights,” the commission said in a statement. “The law violates the principles of nondiscrimination, equality before the law and freedom from arbitrary arrest.”

Go back to my blogs on Mexican Immigration law and lets compare apples to tomatillos.
http://indyfromaz.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/what-would-mexico-do/

And the bad economy and the anti-business attitudes are not to blame for stores closing in Phoenix, it’s SB1070!!
At least according to the open borders LA Times and their latest sob story of evil racist Arizona.
Every time a customer buys some of the large fabric tote bags from the Dollar Store at 43rd Avenue and Thomas Road, Najmuddin Katchi sees another piece of his business vanish.
The purchase of the briefcase-sized shoulder bags means that another one of Katchi’s customers, mostly Latino immigrants, is packing to leave the state before what is touted as the nation’s toughest law against illegal immigrants takes effect July 29.

Katchi’s store isn’t the only business suffering. The vast shopping center that holds his small shop is almost empty. The Food City supermarket closed this spring. Then the furniture shop. Then the pizzeria.
It’s not the economy, it’s racism! It’s Global Warming!
It’s F*cking Maryvale! a part of Phoenix known for crime and poverty and the like.
A shift in police philosophy included embedding Phoenix Gang Unit officers in the precinct, placing more sophisticated resources regularly in what one crime analysis described as “an area saturated with gang members.“(Wikipedia)
Guess what kind of Gangs….Come one, guess…
The giant apartment complex across the street, once brimming with tenants, is two-thirds vacant. Katchi is behind on his rent.
And it’s all them damn racists fault!
It couldn’t be because Maryvale is a crappy neighborhood now could it?
Nothing to do with 10% unemployment, debt, deficits, and bad economic policies. Nope, not that!
It’s Racism!
It’s Global Warming!
“The business is broken,” said Katchi, who has operated his shop at this intersection for 14 years. “After the 29th of July, what happens? Maybe I have to close the store.”
One Note: I am sorry to see a person lose their business but in this town that has been going on on a large scale for 3 years now. A Food City (a lower-end supermarket) near to me closed. Was that because of racism?
No that was a year ago. And it was because the city condemned all the houses in the immediate area and that killed the business. And the Checker Auto Parts and several others.
So the argument is specious, but it’s typical of a liberal media biased story that is more about emotion than logic and facts.
Where I live the housing boom was at it’s peak and you can see where it came to screeching halt.
Was that SB1070? Or the economy.

For the last 20 years, Arizona has been one of the fastest-growing states in the nation. It depends on an expanding population to power its economy, which relies heavily on the construction of new houses.
And guess what the “anyone with a pulse can buy a house” Liberals did to it?
And still do to it because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their “toxic” assets and policies were completely ignored by the recent financial reform which is supposed to prevent this from happening again. So by ignoring the real problem, it won’t happen again.
At the corner of 43rd and Thomas, it’s hard to determine how much of the neighborhood’s woes stem from Arizona’s immigration laws and how much from the state’s economy, battered by a once red-hot housing market that cooled.
But the whole point of writing this is to say the point is evil racists and SB1070, so don’t wimp out now.
Katchi’s revenue was already sagging before April 23, when Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law. Since then, sales have plummeted.
And of course this is logical correlation. NOT!
In adopting the legislation the state embarked on a grand experiment — trying to drive out hundreds of thousands of its residents by what the law calls “attrition through enforcement.”
Yeah, that was written into the law…right…
“The economy’s already bad, but on top of it [SB 1070] is like a bullet in the head to us,” said Osameh Odeh, 35, whose Eden Wear clothing store was empty one recent afternoon. “People don’t come out of their houses anymore.”
We’re going to get you my pretty and you’re little dog too!   <>
But hey, if they want to go somewhere else and be some else’s problem, I say don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. How about LA,SF, Denver or New Mexico they love you there.

The law requires police to check the immigration status of people they lawfully stop and also suspect are in the country illegally. Civil rights groups and the Obama administration have sued to stop the law from taking effect, and a federal judge heard arguments in the case Thursday.
The departure of illegal immigrants, proponents of SB 1070 argue, can only help Arizona’s economy.
Works for me.
But we still have to secure the border first.
And just to round out the sob stories they throw in racial profiling and the tag at the end of the article:
“They don’t want Mexicans,” she said. “So we’ll leave.” (a legal Mexican-American shop owner).
No Journo-List bias here.
Twelve percent of second-generation Latino voters in the state say they support S.B. 1070, according to a recent Latino Decisions poll. That jumps to nearly 30 percent in the fourth generation.
Jesse Hernandez, a second-generation Mexican-American, a product of public housing and a proud Phoenix Republican, is one of those in Arizona who favor the law.
Hernandez says he knows many Latinos who feel just like he does.
“I just don’t like the fact that they’re going to say that an American Latino has the same concerns as a Latino from Mexico. No, we don’t,” Hernandez says.
Hernandez says his Mexican-born parents came to the U.S. after years of waiting at the border to secure papers. He says illegal immigrants need to get in line, just like they did.
“We don’t have time to be marching down the street waving the Mexican flag saying we want rights,” he says. “Because you know what? We did it the right way, and we have rights.”
“It’s like an African-American person forgot that two or three generations ago they were unable to vote, and they are direct descendants of slaves.”– one SB1070 opponent said.
The key here being generations ago.  NOT NOW.
I love how Liberal want to abuse the past to further their own politics–at least when it’s in their own interest that is and they can play the guilt card– but we won’t talk about how the Democrats  (especially Southern Democrats) were the one holding up the Civil Rights legislation in the 1960′s. Nope won’t go there.
So what we have is more emotion over logic and more hyperbole over facts.
But now have a new breed of excuses for illegal immigration, Environment- both economic and Global.
Rejoice, now not only are you a racist, but a heartless  and ignorant environmental destructor who wants to see the economy get even worse if we do something about ILLEGAL ENTRY into this country.
Isn’t that good to know.

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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It's Not You, It's Me...

You either think government is the solution to the problem, or it is the problem. And, unless your worldview shifts, no amount of clever wordsmithing, or smokescreens, will ever change your opinion.

Have you ever heard, “it’s not you, it’s me?”  I know that I have.  People employ this phrase to distract from, and even soften, the blow of ending a relationship.  The dirty little secret – that we all know – is that it simply doesn’t work.  The words do nothing to distract from the fact that, at least to one party, what’s about to happen is very undesirable.
Yet, this is exactly what the media suggests that the Obama White House do.  “If only they made it sound nicer,” the theory goes, “the American people would finally accept President Obama’s liberal agenda.”  Apparently, we just need to have our ears tickled because we mistakenly thought we disliked the president’s policies because they are bad for the country. (Daily Caller)

Imagine that.
If they just explained it better we’d all rush to the wonders and fascination for government control of every second of our lives.
Imagine that.
One Obama adviser was even quoted as saying, “‘I tell you, it’s very frustrating that [the message] is not breaking through.”
Remember they said the same thing due the Health Care “debate” as the popularity of it went into the tank.
Some things that are old are new again.

Dan Gerstein is a smart, centrist Democrat who usually has insightful things to say about the political landscape, but this column entitled, “Fire David Axelrod” is a symptom of the same disease he is trying to cure. Gerstein is shocked that according to poll taken by fellow-Democrat James Carville, 55 percent of Americans think Barack Obama is a socialist. He concludes that this statistic along with similar negative feelings among voters for the stimulus legislation and Obamacare are all part of the White House’s message problem. David Axelrod was a fabulous choice for the campaign, Gerstein says, but he sucks at developing and controlling Obama’s message. Gerstein’s solution is that more Democrats should be demanding that the president shake-up his staff and bring in someone else who will not fail to drive the conversation.
But when it comes to perceptions about health care reform and the stimulus, Gerstein has diagnosed the wrong disease. It isn’t a matter of losing the message that Obamacare is leading us toward more government control of the health care industry, it is the truth and voters know that. As for the stimulus, well, Gerstein may be right that lots of economists think that it was better than nothing. But that doesn’t mean it was actually helpful to the vast majority of Americans. The stimulus has been great for government jobs, but even Obama now admits that he’s going to focus on the private sector to help them create more jobs . Isn’t that what he was supposed to be doing since he came into office nearly two years ago?
David Axelrod may indeed be a net negative for Obama, but it isn’t because a better spinmeister would be able to make lemonade out of lemons. Voters are smarter than most pundits and journalists give them credit for and these folks recognize that the changes afoot are not going to make their lives better. Axelrod or no Axelrod, Obama’s problem isn’t the message. It’s the policies that make people think he’s a socialist. (NY Post)

Don’t shoot the messenger, just replace him with a better one!
It’s not you, darling, It’s me…

And now the Arizona Republic (Repulsive) has run a story with pictures. “Do I Look Illegal?”
<>
Since that is impossible. I guess you’d have to ASK!!
But if you do you’re a racist!
See how that works. It’s not them, it’s YOU!  You’re the Racist!
Now doesn’t that make you feel better, honey…


Arianna Huffington: “George, the truth is that right now we have precisely the regulatory system that the Bush-Cheney administration wanted. Full of loopholes, full of cronies and lobbyists filling the very agencies they’re supposed to be overseeing the industry.”
George Will: “So, it’s Bush’s fault? Just clear this up.”
Huffington: “It is absolutely a thousand percent Bush-Cheney’s fault.”
It’s not me, it’s Bush!


The fact that the Financial Reform package exempted the largest mortgage holder in the country from the rules changes, oversight, and regulations is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a government entity, is not worth mentioning.
That the government itself is now the largest mortgage lender in the US.
It’s still not me, darling, it’s you!
What happens when the government drives business to a few banks in collusion with the government to control your activities and funds.  The government will be able to identify what you do, what your habits are, when you use money and what you spend it on?
After all, it’s for you own good.
Don’t you just love how government turns everything on it’s head.
And it’s not You, It’s Me!
I’m too stupid to understand the complexities of Social Justice and Social Engineering and you’re not able to communicate it’s brilliance properly.
So it’s not you, it’s me.

Covering Their Fannie (and Freddie)

Keep in Mind that the Financial Reform Bill, which is now in some trouble, is written largely by Sen. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. The people who brought you the subprime mess to begin with their insistence on subprime mortgages for people who couldn’t even afford those.
But we were discriminating against the poor!
Oh No! We can’t have that!
Everyone must be equal!

Subprime Scandal: Missing from stories about finance reform is what Democrats left out of it: a fix for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which continue to bleed billions.
Nor has it been explained why the two mortgage giants at the heart of the housing crisis were excluded. A little research, however, provides answers. Many of the Senate and House conferees who assembled the final overhaul bill are among the biggest recipients of cash from Fannie and Freddie, which over the years have been plagued by Democrat cronyism and corruption.
Some of the Hill’s biggest protectors of the toxic twins and their market-distorting “affordable housing” mission landed key positions as conferees on the panel that wrote the final draft of the bank reform legislation. For example, conference committee leaders Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., respectively raked in more than $133,000 and $40,000 in donations from Fannie and Freddie, Federal Election Commission records show.
The two lawmakers, in turn, have been the congressional chartered companies’ staunchest defenders. Leading up to the housing meltdown, Dodd insisted time and again — despite growing evidence to the contrary — that Fannie and Freddie were “fundamentally strong” and “in good shape.”
Frank maintained that “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not facing any kind of financial crisis.” “The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies,” Frank griped, “the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
To satisfy such politically mandated lending goals, Washington-based Fannie and Freddie loaded up on subprime and other high-risk home loans. Their exposure was greater than all the major Wall Street players combined. And now they’re insolvent, with taxpayers potentially on the hook for as much as $1 trillion.
Already Fannie and Freddie’s $160 billion government bailout has topped that spent on AIG, Citigroup and other Democrat poster boys of the crisis, making their rescue the mother of all bailouts.
We can’t think of two entities more deserving of overhaul. Yet the Dodd-Frank Act doesn’t even try to reform them. This means nothing will change except the size of government’s hand in the economy. By not addressing Fannie and Freddie, economist Brian Wesbury noted “the government is taking no blame for the subprime crisis and is demanding more power over the U.S. financial system.”
Several other conferees instrumental in keeping Fannie and Freddie exempt from the new financial rules also show up among the top beneficiaries of Fannie and Freddie campaign cash (see table).
President Obama and top aide Rahm Emanuel also ranked among top recipients of Fannie and Freddie gifts when they were in Congress. From the White House, they lobbied Congress for a financial overhaul and got 90% of what they asked — including a pass for Fannie and Freddie, where Emanuel once served as director.
Their private piggy bank for “social justice” — which they used to provide high-risk loans that otherwise were out of reach for constituents — remains safe from promised “sweeping reform.”
In the ultimate insult, the two lawmakers most deserving of blame for the financial crisis carry the name of the legislation that supposedly will deliver us from financial crisis. The villains are, according to the media, the white knights riding in to save us from the havoc they caused. A more sinister script could not have been written. (IBD)

Unless you’re an elitist Democrat who has complete contempt for “the people” and are only out there to push your agenda and nothing else.
But don’t worry, we’re from the government and we are here to help you!!
UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE: A PREVIEW
Anyone wanting a preview of Obama-Care need just focus on Massachusetts, the state that provided the blueprint for Obama’s plan. It makes a great case for making haste in repealing ObamaCare.
In Massachusetts, health care prices are out of control, emergency rooms are overcrowded, the government is at war with itself and private insurers are running in the red, refusing to enter critical markets on the government’s unrealistic terms.
The party line now is that the Bay State’s reform was not about cost control but rather expanding access to care. The program’s backers claim that the price spiral they find themselves in was expected, anticipated, even if they didn’t actually have a plan for it.
That’s a revisionist’s tale. In early 2006, the plan’s backers — led by then Republican Gov. Mitt Romney — adamantly asserted that his plan would in fact control costs, provide universal coverage and improve the quality of care. (If this sounds familiar, it’s because Obama’s team borrowed the marketing scripts.)
Disinterested outsiders predicted that both prices and total costs would most likely increase under the government-dominated system, since massive new demand, reimbursed at the lowest prices, would be forced on a fixed supply. They were shouted down by insiders vested in getting the reform passed.
Guess who was right?
Three years prior to reform, insurance premiums for employers were increasing 3.7% more slowly in Massachusetts than in the rest of the country.  Today, the opposite is true.  Prices in Massachusetts are increasing 5.7% more than in other states. In Boston, prices for employer-provided family plans are increasing 8.2% faster than in other large metropolitan areas.
“Because the plan’s main components are the same as those of the new health reform law,” the study’s authors note, “the effects of the plan provide a window onto the country’s future.”
But it’s “fair”.
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ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION & BORDER SECURITY
While President Obama was meeting at the White House with The Congressional Hispanic Caucus and other Hispanic activists, he sent a Power Point presentation that said virtually nothing to Gov. Brewer.
Now he’s going to make a Campaign Speech tonight on it.
I know I’m excited!
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama hopes to rally new momentum behind the push for an immigration overhaul by explaining why he thinks a comprehensive approach is the only way to fix what he and others say is a system badly in need of repair.
(aka Sen. Jon Kyl’s “hostage” comment) Do it my way, that benefits me or not at all.

Obama was laying out his rationale in a {Campaign} speech Thursday, his first as president on the issue.
Obama wasn’t expected to announce any new proposals or policy changes. But feeling pressure from a range of supporters, he was aiming to jump-start the effort he had promised to make a priority in his first year and which advocates had hoped would be completed by now.
aka “Amnesty”.

The speech follows up on back-to-back meetings Obama had with advocates and lawmakers at the White House this week.
Gov. Brewer got 20 minutes crammed into the schedule at the last minute and then a Power Point presentation nearly a month later.

Obama has said a comprehensive solution means “accountability for everybody” — from the U.S. government meeting its obligation to secure the border, to businesses facing the consequences of knowingly employing illegal immigrants, to those who enter the country illegally owning up to their actions before they can begin the process of becoming citizens.
Has anyone told Labor Secretary Hilda Solis who a week ago put out a PSA saying if your Illegal and being treated or paid unfairly to giver her a call and The US Dept. of Labor would help you out??

Recent developments on immigration influenced his decision to give a speech, White House officials say, most notably Arizona’s enactment of a tough anti-immigrant law and protests across the country against it.
“He thought this was a good time to talk plainly with the American people about his views on immigration,” spokesman Bill Burton said.
Talk Plainly, Obama? Now that’s a novel idea.
Is he even capable of that?
NO.
Oh, and there’s that pesky LAWSUIT against SB1070. You know the one where we are “racists” and “misguided”.
So this is a campaign ploy.
As everything else is.
He looks tough.
He panders to his base.
The Ministry of Truth slobber all over him.
Liberal go all mushy.
Then nothing happens.
But it looks good.
And he wants “to do something”. Or at least look and sound like it.
Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing!  (Richard III)