The Light

indyfromaz|

The light at the end of the socialist environmentalist tunnel is a train, by the way.
But it will make you “feel” good as you get run over by it and your freedom denied.
But you’ll be saving the planet! Isn’t that peachy.
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
FEAR IS HOPE
Beginning today (Sept 1), it is a crime to manufacture or ship for sale a traditional 75-watt incandescent light bulb in the European Union. Autocrats in Brussels last year declared war on Edison’s greatest invention with a ban on 100-watt lamps. Homes throughout the Old World will continue to dim until incandescent lighting of all types is snuffed out in 2012 – the same year the United States is scheduled to begin a phaseout schedule mirroring the European plan.
The EU’s final solution to the incandescent problem was sparked by bureaucratic irritation at a public that refused to accept the pale, flickering, cold light emanating from government-approved, expensive compact fluorescent bulbs. “Although energy-saving bulbs have been clearly labeled since 1998 as the most cost-effective bulbs, their relatively high purchase price has inhibited take-up,” the European Commission website explains. “To remedy this, EU European Parliament asked the Commission to adopt minimum requirements phasing out the least-efficient bulbs.” governments and the
Consumers realize the warm glow of a cheap incandescent is superior in every way to the deadly, mercury-filled substitute being foisted upon them. In Finland, Helsingin Sanomat reported that the new ban has not resulted in a surge of sales for the new bulbs that the bureaucrats expected. Instead, 75-watt packages have been flying off the shelves as customers filled their closets, garages and attics with lighting supplies for the long term. Such hoarding has been the rule for more than a year. London’s Daily Mail gave away 25,000 of the 100-watt bulbs as a prize in a January 2009 contest. Der Spiegel reported that German customers left hardware stores with carts jammed with enough incandescent bulbs to last 20 years.
We can look forward to a similar reaction on these shores as our own Jan. 1, 2012, deadline approaches. President George W. Bush’s signature on the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 condemned the traditional bulb in favor of the fluorescent lights rejected by the free market. Only eight senators and 100 House members opposed the bill.
Yes, George W Bush, the Left’s Anti-Christ!
There is still hope that sanity could return before the U.S. ban on normal light bulbs takes effect. Two years ago, New Zealanders faced an imminent ban. The National Party, at the time in the minority, made overturning the light-bulb scheme a priority in its campaign against the ruling Labor government. The public responded favorably to the party that proclaimed that it “stands for freedom, choice, independence and ambition.” In December 2008, the National Party government overturned the light-bulb ban. Republican challengers seeking an edge over Democrats in November could learn a few things from the Kiwis. (Washington Times)


A light bulb factory closes in Virginia as mandated fluorescents are made in China. It’s now a crime to make or ship for sale 75-watt incandescent bulbs in the European Union. Welcome to green hell.
(I bet if they’d had a Union…)

Thomas Alva Edison was a genius credited with the invention of many things — the phonograph, the motion picture, the incandescent light bulb, global warming. That last credit was given by those who rank light bulbs right up there with the internal combustion engine as ravagers of the planet.
The General Electric light bulb factory in Winchester, Va., closed this month, a victim, along with its 200 employees, of a 2007 energy conservation measure passed by Congress that set standards essentially banning ordinary incandescents by 2014.
Just as they are by fuel-economy standards, consumers are denied choice and the freedom to evaluate any possible benefits on their own by the nanny state. Washington’s force and coercion are necessary because it seems the great unwashed can’t seem to see the benefits or ignore the risks of compact fluorescents, or CFLs.
In Europe, light bulbs are already a controlled substance. The 100-watt bulb was banned last year and the 75-watt became illegal as of Sept. 1.
Not surprisingly, incandescent light bulbs there quickly became a hot item, flying off the shelves while they were still available. Der Spiegel reported that German customers leave hardware stores with carts piled high with enough incandescent bulbs to last 20 years. Garages and attics throughout the Old World are full of them.
It’s said that CFL bulbs are more economical in the long run because they supposedly use up to 80% less energy than old-style bulbs and don’t burn out as quickly. Though we’re not fully convinced of these claims, we do know that CFL bulbs are more expensive, costing up to six times as much as equivalent incandescent bulbs. Because they are made of glass tubes twisted into a spiral, they also require more hand labor and therefore cost more.
Due to the expense, CFLs are made largely in China, where labor is cheaper and environmental regulations not so strict. As with wind turbine blades, we are creating plenty of green jobs — in the People’s Republic.
Despite governments’ effort to market them, CFLs are not necessarily better. Tests conducted by the London Telegraph found that using a single lamp to illuminate a room, an 11-watt CFL produced only 58% of the illumination of an equivalent 60-watt incandescent — even after a 10-minute warm-up that consumers have found necessary for CFLs to reach their full brightness.
Lack of light isn’t the only drawback. CFLs apparently are so dangerous, the European Commission has to warn consumers of the environmental hazards they pose. If one breaks, consumers are advised to air out rooms and avoid using vacuum cleaners to prevent exposure to the mercury in the bulbs.
You can’t just throw an old bulb out, either. It must be properly disposed of lest your bedroom or family room become a Superfund toxic waste site.
Mercury is considered by environmentalists to be among the most toxic of toxic substances and, yes, it is dangerous if ingested or handled over time. We’ve been warned that high concentrations in fish are dangerous to pregnant women. We’ve been told mercury in vaccines causes autism. So it’s safe in light bulbs?
As we’ve found out here with energy regulation and taxes, and the push for cap-and-trade, governments don’t care what people want. Nor do they weigh the costs, the benefits and the risks of this or that. Government must mandate what’s good for us under penalty of law. (IBD)


And if this is the humble Light Bulb, imagine what Health Care will be like.
And then there’s the Chevy Volt, built, subsidized and marketed by the US Government (GM-Government Motors).
Texas Instruments, for example, has a page on its web site devoted entirely to the wonders of using RFID chips to monitor municipal trash collection in order to determine whether people are properly recycling.
The city council in Cleveland, Ohio, on the other hand, is far less concerned with even the appearance of benevolence in its RFID-based trash monitoring program, than is Texas Instruments.  The council recently voted to expand its RFID trash program by mandating the installation of the devices in order to determine and hand out fines for failure to participate.  In yet another example of the unholy alliance between business and government in expanding the reach of Big Brother, Cleveland has retained a  private company to handle its high-tech recycling program.  It’s a win-win — the company makes money by collecting the recycled trash, and the city reaps at least a short-term windfall by receiving payments from the company for a task it formerly had to carry out.  The loser, of course, is the consumer who is paying the taxes and fees for such activities; and surrendering to the company and the city council any privacy in their accumulation or disposal of garbage.
In California, schools are finding that students – like municipal citizens — constitute another captive audience on which to experiment with RFID chips.  One school district in Contra Costa County, for example, now requires all its students to wear jerseys embedded with RFID tags, so their whereabouts can be monitored all the while they are at the schools, and then data-based.   The tags also reportedly will alert school officials if a student has not eaten; though what punishment will befall dieting students is unclear.
Where is the Contra Costa County school system getting the money to implement such a school-based Big Brother program?  They get the money from same place most of these and other privacy-invasive programs come from — you, the American taxpayer; genereously given away as federal “grants.” (AJC)
The government wants to know everything about you. Because, you want to misbehave and act outside society’s interest (aka their control) you individual freedom-ist. You selfish bastard.
We, The Government, just want you to be safe, save energy, and save the planet all at the same time.
Is that so wrong?

Get Your Exemption Card Here!!

Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
So it’s time for a little something this president understands, Quid Pro Quo.

“This card a tangible reminder that Obama has deliberately broken his central campaign promise not to raise any form of taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000. The last President to break his tax pledge – Bush 41 – served only one term.” – Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform


You may have noticed that President Obama has broken his central campaign promise – a “firm pledge” that Americans making less than $250,000 would not see “any form of tax increase.” He first broke this pledge sixteen days into his presidency when he signed a 156 percent increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco. And Obamacare contains 21 tax increases – several of which violate his “firm pledge”.
To protect you from these tax hikes, Americans for Tax Reform presents the “Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card”. The card fits neatly in your wallet and contains a list of the tax hikes signed into law by President Obama that violate his tax pledge, as well as a few other taxes that have been threatened: a European-style Value-Added Tax, Cap and Trade taxes, and even a federal soda tax.
Fill out the form below to get your Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card
How to use the card:
Step 1: Present the card to merchants, employers, and tax authorities.
Step 2: If challenged, pleasantly ask: “Are you calling President Obama a liar?”

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
–Candidate Barack Obama, Sept. 12, 2008
“If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.”

Read more: https://www.atr.org/obama-tax-hike-exemption-card-a5140##ixzz0sLFjN4tF
TheTax on Indoor Tanning Services takes effect July 1, 2010: This provision of Obamacare imposes a new 10 percent excise tax on Americans using indoor tanning salons.  The tax was tucked into the bill behind closed doors at the last minute, replacing the previous “Bo-Tax” – a proposed tax on plastic surgery.  The 30 million Americans who visit tanning facilities are getting a lesson in the petty, nanny-state nature of Obamacare – every time they walk through the door.  Not to mention the business owners and employees who are threatened by the tax.  (Page 373 of Manager’s amendment/$2.7 billion)
The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” takes effect Jan. 1, 2011: Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).  (Page 1997/Sec. 9003/$5 billion)
The “Special Needs Kids Tax” takes effect Jan. 1, 2011: This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit).  There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children.  There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.  Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year.  Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.  (Page 1999/Sec. 9005/$14 billion)
The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike takes effect Jan. 1, 2011: This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.  (Page 1998/Sec. 9004/$1.3 billion)
TheMedical Itemized Deductions Cap takes effect Jan. 1, 2013: Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction if the total cost if the expenses reduces the filer’s income by 7.5%.  This provision of Obamacare imposes a threshold of 10%.  This new tax will most adversely affect early retirees and the catastrophically ill.  (Page 2034/Sec. 9013/$15.2 billion)
The Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax takes effect Jan. 1, 2014: Anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following (page 71 of manager’s amendment updates Reid bill): (Page 324/Sec. 1501)

	Single	2 People	3+ People
2014	$95/1.0% AGI	$190/1.0% AGI	$285/1.0% AGI
2015	$325/2.0% AGI	$650/2.0% AGI	$975/2.0% AGI
2016+	$695/2.5% AGI	$1390/2.0% AGI	$2085/2.5%/AGI

The Obamacare Medical Prosthetics and Devices Tax took effect in January of 2010:
This Obamacare tax raises the price of all medical prosthetic devices, such as pacemakers and artificial limbs. Consumers of these devices will end up paying more for these life-saving items.  ($20 billion)
The Obama Tobacco Tax Hike took effect April 1, 2009
Obama first broke his tax pledge sixteen days into his presidency when he signed into law a 156 percent increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco.  At that time, Obama was rightly called out by Calvin Woodward of the Associated Press in a piece titled “Promises, Promises: Obama Tax Pledge Up in Smoke” Use your Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card – or else be prepared to pony up an extra 62 cents per pack of cigarettes.
Potential Obama Tax Hike to Watch Out For:  A Federal Soda Tax
In an interview with Men’s Health published in September of 2009, President Obama said that a tax on soda and sugar-laden beverages was “an idea that we should be exploring.”  So, keep your Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card handy at all times!  With this President, you never know when the other shoe will drop!

And we haven’t included the Bank Tax (that you’ll end up paying)  in the now troubled, but ultimately will pass-I believe-Financial Reform Bill.
Then we Have the Cap & Trade Bill with it’s 19th Century outrage for the Industrial Revolution which will now be the “We Hate BP” bill.
The 2011 Tax increase (previously outlined) in my blog “2011“
The whole salt thing and what about taxing foods that are bad for you?
The moratorium on drilling that the President is fighting, so gas prices can skyrocket and INCREASE our dependency on foreign Oil because all the 60′s pie-in-sky bovine fecal matter will not change reality.
So you have to use the card as a discount for that $7.00 gas you may get saddled with.
So you may need multiple copies!

Outrage has a Price Tag

Outrage has a Price


June 21, 2010 · Leave a Comment · Edit This

Everyone should see this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY1o3LV6V8M&feature=player_embedded
Here’s what the president said, ‘The problem is, if we secure the border, then you all won’t have a reason to support comprehensive immigration reform.’ In other words, they’re holding it hostage. They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with comprehensive immigration reform. I explained that, ‘you and I, Mr. President, have an obligation to secure the border. That’s an obligation. It also has potentially positive benefits. You don’t have to have comprehensive reform to secure the border, but you have to secure the border to get comprehensive reform.’ I said, ‘you would be surprised maybe you don’t think there wouldn’t be no incentive for comprehensive reform, but I’m not so sure that’s true. In any event, it doesn’t matter. We’re supposed to secure the border.’
But that’s why it’s being done. They frankly don’t want to do it. They want to get something in return for doing their duty.
What’s in it for me? Why should I do my job if there’s no quid pro quo.
Now that’s REAL leadership for you!
There was even an extended clip that warned the Democrats could likely use the same cram down/deem it passed reconciliation on Cap & Trade.
Now that’s Democracy in action!
Meanwhile, In Sanctimonious Los Angeles:
Two much-debated City Hall issues are expected to converge this week when the Los Angeles Police Department’s red light camera program moves to the front of the line for an exemption from the city’s contracting boycott of Arizona over that state’s new immigration enforcement law.

On Tuesday, the City Council is scheduled to consider — and appears likely to approve — an exception to the boycott allowing a 10-month extension of a multimillion-dollar agreement with Scottsdale-based American Traffic Solutions.

The firm operates cameras at 32 city intersections that catch tens of thousands of red light violators each year. The council’s Public Safety Committee says the exception is justified because red light cameras provide a “significant benefit to public safety.”



Whoops!

In addition to extending the current red light camera agreement, the council is scheduled to consider asking for bids on a new contract to operate and expand the photo enforcement program to more intersections starting next year.

That action could further entangle the two issues. In addition to the current vendor, a top competitor for the new contract — Redflex Traffic Systems — also has its headquarters in Arizona.
“Industry wide, they’re two front runners,” noted Matthew Crawford, a senior administrative analyst in the city’s budget office.
Poor babies, their sanctimony ran held long at 55mph into “public safety”….
Last week, what could have been the first exemption from the boycott — an LAPD request for officers to attend an Arizona training conference — was withdrawn after some council members voiced concern. This prompted the police officers’ union to complain that political correctness at City Hall was taking precedence over public safety.(LA Times)
I guess sanctimony has a price.
And then there’s this ditty From Nogales, AZ:

A Mexican drug cartel has threatened Nogales [Arizona] police officers, saying they will be targeted for retribution if they conduct off-duty drug busts.

Nogales Police Chief Jeffrey Kirkham told the Nogales International on Friday that the threats stemmed from an incident approximately two weeks ago, when off-duty officers surprised marijuana smugglers while riding horseback in an unincorporated border area east of town. The officers seized part of the drug load, and the smugglers were able to flee back into Mexico with the other part. “As a result of that,” Kirkham said, “our officers have received threats from the cartel that they are to look the other way if they are off-duty, or they will be targeted by a sniper or by other means.” NPD learned of the threats through informants, he said. Following the threats, Kirhkam said, NPD notified the Border Patrol and other federal law enforcement agencies, which responded by stepping up manpower and surveillance in the area where the off-duty bust occurred. In addition, Kirkham met with his officers to advise them of the threats and to authorize them to take precautions, including wearing firearms while off duty.

“The Nogales Police Department will not be intimidated,” he said. Kirkham said the threats highlighted the need for more federal law enforcement at the border.

“This has nothing to do with SB 1070 or illegal immigration,” he said, “it has to do with narco-trafficking and the violence of the cartels.” Santa Cruz County Sheriff Antonio Estrada said he was unaware of similar threats being made against his deputies.
“They seem to respect an officer who’s doing his job,” Estrada said of the cartels, “but when you do it as a civilian, they really take offense.” Given the cartels’ track record of violence, Estrada said, any such threat “has to be taken very seriously”.

Here’s what the president said, ‘The problem is, if we secure the border, then you all won’t have a reason to support comprehensive immigration reform.’

Your blood boiling yet?
If it’s not you must be a Liberal…

How Green(e) is My Politics

Alvin Greene, a 13 year veteran of the military won 59% of the vote in the South Carolina democratic primary for the u.s. senate last week. Greene, despite having spent less than 2 thousand dollars on his campaign handily won the primary.

One would think that the Dems would be excited that a black guy with a very limited budget beat out a white guy with loads of campaign money and could be the first african american senator from the southern US since reconstruction.
But people, including representative James Clyburn (D-SC), House Whip in Congress is demanding an investigation. He and other members of the Democratic party have asked Alvin Greene to pull out of the race.
Some also think he’s a plant by the Republicans.
“Alvin Greene is pretending to be an idiot,” Creighton (of far left Flamethrower website Firedoglake) writes, noting that Greene holds a college degree and worked as an intelligence specialist in the US military. “He is doing it because someone doesn’t want a strong populist democrat like Vic Rawl running against Jim DeMint in South Carolina for his seat in the United States Senate.”
Isn’t politics just fun.
“There were some real shenanigans going on in the South Carolina primary,” Clyburn said on the Bill Press radio show, according to The Hill. “I don’t know if [Greene] was a Republican plant; he was someone’s plant.” Clyburn is particularly suspicious that Greene could come up with the $10,400 needed to register for the race despite being unemployed.

A spokesman for Sen. Jim DeMint, Greene’s opponent in the general election, said the charge that the Democratic nominee is a Republican plant is “ridiculous.”

Whomever the Democrats nominated was not likely to win against the very popular DeMint anyhow.

Super leftist Ezra Klein of the Washington Post though, put it this way: There’s been a lot of talk about what sort of trickery and skullduggery and inanity could’ve produced Alvin Greene’s win in South Carolina. But after reading all of it, I’m coming down on the side of Dave Weigel: Maybe the guy just, you know, won.
So why all the outrage? All the conspiracy theories?
Could it be they want to create a crisis, so they can exploit it?
Get the sleepy, apathetic, South Carolina Democrats whipped up?
They want to know where he got the $10,400 to be put on the ballot.
They are more obsessed with this than the $4 Trillion in worthless spending they’ve already done nationally.
It’s like focusing on 1 tree while the whole forest burns down!
But they miss the fact that 100,000 people voted for this guy. Regardless of whether he was “a plant” and “someone” seeded him the money, he still got the votes.
Oh, right, because this was an open primary it was a Republican hit-job…
When asked by NBC’s David Gregory on Sunday if Greene’s election was legitimate, senior White House adviser David Axelrod said, “It doesn’t appear so to me. It was a mysterious deal.”
Axelrod said: “The whole thing is odd. I don’t really know how to explain it and I don’t think anybody else does either. … How [Greene] won the primary is a big mystery, and until you resolve that I don’t think he can claim to be a strong, credible candidate.”
But they are still stuck with an unemployed, no experience candidate with a pending felony trial.
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like the perfect Democrat to me.
So what is really the troubling factor here is the Democrats attitude that the guy they put up, a former legislator named Vic Rawl, who spend virtually no money either but had the blessing of the establishment,didn’t win so it must be a trick.
The voting machines were rigged, they say. “Hanging Chads” anyone?
Some want the primary results thrown out.
They didn’t get their man.
That’s the really troubling part.
And these are the same Democrats who will, even after 10 years, go ranting off into left field about how the Republicans stole the election in 2000 from Al Gore.
They didn’t get their man.
Does this sound like a free and fair, democratic election ethic or a party apparatchik put-up job?
The Party wants whom the party wants. And the people are just sheep who are supposed to vote the way the party wants them too and if they don’t it must therefore be FRAUD!
And if the party doesn’t get what it wants it will simply erase it and start over again until you do what the party wants.
Very scary.
But does it sound familiar?
Health Care reform anyone? Bailouts? TARP? Stimulus? Cap and Trade!
The majority of Americans were vehemently against the Health Care bill, but the Democrats wanted their Holy Grail no matter what and they got what they wanted by any means necessary.
And now it’s Energy.
Cap and Trade, which stalled out for lack of support is now re-energized by the Oil Spill.
“The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now,” he said. “I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy – because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater.” –President Obama, last night.
Never waste a Crisis!
Overly Expensive, inefficient, but politically correct,Green Tech or Bust.
One problem, the nation, and the world run on Oil.
So they need to make Oil unattractive, both politically and economically.
Enter Cap and Trade.
Mind you, the rest of the world is going to do anything, but take advantage of the weak, stupid Americans.
And 10′s of thousands of good jobs will evaporate.
Earlier this month, the president ordered a six month ban on exploratory deepwater drilling – a move some experts predict will pour salt into the wounds of the already injured region.
The moratorium could lead to massive job losses in Louisiana, which relies on drilling to support its economy, Louisiana State University Economist James Richardson said.
“The moratorium could be more devastating than the leak, because more people are employed by the oil industry than the fishing industry,” he said.
The moratorium could cost the state more than 20,000 jobs by the end of the year, according to the Louisiana Department of Economic Development. The Department estimates for every one employee working on a rig, nine employees onshore are working to support that rig.
“During one of the most challenging economic periods in decades, the last thing we need is to enact public policies that will certainly destroy thousands of existing jobs while preventing the creation of thousands more,” Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said in a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Broken down by industry, the Louisiana Department of Economic Development estimates fishing and tourism contributes $10 billion to the Louisiana economy, while energy contributes $65 billion.

Following the moratorium, Anadarko Petroleum announced its intention to move three rigs out of the Gulf.

And when the taxes from this debacle cripple the country anyone for 20% unemployment??
The price of gas will skyrocket.
But candidate Obama was only too happy about that previously
January 2008:

“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket . . . because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, natural gas, you name it . . . Whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money, and they will pass that [cost] on to consumers.’’

In the same interview, Obama suggested that his energy policy would require the ruin of the coal industry. “If somebody wants to build a coal-fired plant, they can,’’ he told the Chronicle. “It’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.’’

So the Oil Spill is the perfect political opportunity to get what they want because they want it.
The fact that the people are again, against it, is not relevant.
They want what they want.
So the Democrats in South Carolina want to invalidate a valid election because they didn’t get what they wanted. They complain to this day about the 2000 election because they didn’t get what they wanted. And then the Health Care Debate went on for over a year until they bum-rushed it through in the most partisan vote in the history of the country.
Now they want your energy.
Your Car.
Your AC.
Your everything that is manufactured and shipped that will be more costly.
And all the job losses for this?
Like they care.
They want what they want when they want it.
Period.
And no one is going to take their toys away from them!

2011

People can change the volume, the location and the composition of their income, and they can do so in response to changes in government policies.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.

John Fund of WSJ's Political Diary breaks down Tuesday's most interesting primary contests. Also, WSJ Columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady translates the latest economic signals from Washington.

Likewise, who is gobsmacked when they are told that the two wealthiest Americans—Bill Gates and Warren Buffett—hold the bulk of their wealth in the nontaxed form of unrealized capital gains? The composition of wealth also responds to incentives. And it's also simple enough for most people to understand that if the government taxes people who work and pays people not to work, fewer people will work. Incentives matter.

People can also change the timing of when they earn and receive their income in response to government policies. According to a 2004 U.S. Treasury report, "high income taxpayers accelerated the receipt of wages and year-end bonuses from 1993 to 1992—over $15 billion—in order to avoid the effects of the anticipated increase in the top rate from 31% to 39.6%. At the end of 1993, taxpayers shifted wages and bonuses yet again to avoid the increase in Medicare taxes that went into effect beginning 1994."
Just remember what happened to auto sales when the cash for clunkers program ended. Or how about new housing sales when the $8,000 tax credit ended? It isn't rocket surgery, as the Ivy League professor said.
On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush's tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.
Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there's always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere.

Now, if people know tax rates will be higher next year than they are this year, what will those people do this year? They will shift production and income out of next year into this year to the extent possible. As a result, income this year has already been inflated above where it otherwise should be and next year, 2011, income will be lower than it otherwise should be.

Also, the prospect of rising prices, higher interest rates and more regulations next year will further entice demand and supply to be shifted from 2011 into 2010. In my view, this shift of income and demand is a major reason that the economy in 2010 has appeared as strong as it has. When we pass the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 2011, my best guess is that the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe "double dip" recession.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan—with bipartisan support—began the first phase in a series of tax cuts passed under the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), whereby the bulk of the tax cuts didn't take effect until Jan. 1, 1983. Reagan's delayed tax cuts were the mirror image of President Barack Obama's delayed tax rate increases. For 1981 and 1982 people deferred so much economic activity that real GDP was basically flat (i.e., no growth), and the unemployment rate rose to well over 10%.
But at the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 1983 the economy took off like a rocket, with average real growth reaching 7.5% in 1983 and 5.5% in 1984. It has always amazed me how tax cuts don't work until they take effect. Mr. Obama's experience with deferred tax rate increases will be the reverse. The economy will collapse in 2011.

Consider corporate profits as a share of GDP. Today, corporate profits as a share of GDP are way too high given the state of the U.S. economy. These high profits reflect the shift in income into 2010 from 2011. These profits will tumble in 2011, preceded most likely by the stock market.
In 2010, without any prepayment penalties, people can cash in their Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), Keough deferred income accounts and 401(k) deferred income accounts. After paying their taxes, these deferred income accounts can be rolled into Roth IRAs that provide after-tax income to their owners into the future. Given what's going to happen to tax rates, this conversion seems like a no-brainer.
The result will be a crash in tax receipts once the surge is past. If you thought deficits and unemployment have been bad lately, you ain't seen nothing yet. (Mr. Arthur Laffer is the chairman of Laffer Associates and co-author of "Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status" (Threshold, 2010).)

And there's the "reduction" in the Deficit from The Government takeover of health care and those associated taxes.
Then the proposals for Cap & Trade that will tax your energy.
Fifty three of the Senate's 59 Democrats gave unelected, overpaid bureaucrats at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a green light yesterday to do pretty much whatever they choose in their quixotic crusade against global warming. All 41 Republicans and six brave Democrats voted for Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's resolution nullifying the EPA's recent usurpation of authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate the U.S. economy to combat greenhouse gases. Thankfully, this craven surrender of congressional authority isn't the last word on the issue, assuming that the November elections produce a Senate with enough backbone to reassert the legislature's rightful power.
In the meantime, it's vital to understand how bureaucracies function. Whatever else they may do, leading bureaucrats always do two things, regardless of which party controls the White House or Congress: They limit choices available to the rest of us by imposing regulations that increase government power and thus justify expanding their budgets and staffs; and they protect themselves and their turf by suppressing internal dissent, often at any costs.
As an example of the latter, consider career EPA scientist Alan Carlin. Last year, Carlin went through all the proper channels in submitting a study to the EPA's top leadership in which he raised serious questions about the credibility of scientific reports used to justify the agency's decision to regulate greenhouse gases. Carlin's study became public thanks to the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Carlin's reward was to be publicly pilloried by President Obama's EPA administrator, Lisa Jackson. His work was suppressed within the agency, and he was threatened with additional retaliation if he continued voicing his views. Rather than endure this bureaucratic muzzling, Carlin retired.
Similarly, EPA lawyers Allan Zabel and Laurie Williams -- a married couple living in San Francisco who between them have four decades of experience at the agency -- became so concerned last year about the EPA's support of cap-and-trade legislation that they created a YouTube video titled "The Huge Mistake" to explain their case. They made it clear that the video represented only their personal opinions, but the EPA still ordered them to change the video's content or face severe punishment.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., predicts that a suffocating new round of EPA regulations will soon descend upon the "one-fifth of our restaurants, one-fourth of our schools, two-thirds of our hospitals and doctor's offices, 10 percent of our churches, thousands of farms and millions of small businesses" that emit greenhouse gases. Considering how the EPA grandees mistreat their underlings, we wonder how the agency will respond to the soon-to-be-swelling ranks of critics on the outside.(Washington Examiner)

Then there's the bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare.
But don't worry, you can be safe and secure and get the warm fuzzies...

BECAUSE IT'S ALL GEORGE W. BUSH's FAULT! :)

So have your Two Minute Hate (A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp-George Orwell) and go out and work 3 jobs just to put food on the table and a roof over your head.
The Guardian reported on June 2 that the UN was supporting a switch to a radical anti-meat agenda. “A global shift towards a vegan diet is vital to save the world from hunger, fuel poverty and the worst impacts of climate change, a UN report said today,” wrote the paper.

Here’s how the group Vegan Action describes this extreme vegetarianism. “While vegetarians choose not to use flesh foods, vegans also avoid dairy and eggs, as well as fur, leather, wool, down, and cosmetics or chemical products tested on animals

The UN report is all about the environmental impact of “consumption and production,” or pretty much what humans do – eat and make stuff. It warns: “A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products."
So evil carnivores everywhere beware, the Politically Correct are gunning for you too!

Best rest assured, the government will be here to save you! :)

“We see it as a entrepreneurial bill - a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.”-Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Doesn't that just make you feel so much better! :)

Moving on

Mexican government officials have moved their satellite consular office from the Catalina Island Country Club to a Catholic Church – citing protection under the Vienna Convention – after it was discovered that they did not have the appropriate paperwork to issue the island’s illegal immigrants identification cards.
Since The Washington Examiner reported that the management of the club, on the island of Catalina, discovered that the event was not a multi-cultural celebration as they had been told and refused to allow the Mexican government to set up shop.
The Mexican officials will provide “matricular” card services to Mexican nationals at St. Catherine’s Church, on the island.
So the Mexican Government lied about what they were going to do and got the boot! And now they have retreated to a Church to seek sanctuary.
Notice, they aren’t doing it on Mexican Consular grounds…They know what they are doing.
But like all socialists and Leftist, they don’t care.
The end justify the means.
****
After Gov. Brewer hit-and-run meeting the President:
When asked if she thinks the president has read the law, Brewer only smiled.

In a written statement, the White House said Obama reiterated his concern over the law and how it could lead to a patchwork of different state immigration regulations that would interfere with the federal government’s response.
WHAT FEDERAL RESPONSE?
To sue us, call us “misquided” and let your cronies calls us Nazis and racists!?
Is that the response you’re referring to!?
“The president urged Gov. Brewer to be his partner in working in a bipartisan manner on comprehensive immigration reform to implement the type of smart, sensible, and effective solutions the American people expect and deserve from their federal government,” the White House said.
“Comprehensive Immigration Reform” all-or-nothing Amnesty, not border security.
Neither side wants anything less.
The Democrats want to pander to Latinos for potential voters.
Republicans want cheap laborers.
And the American People get the shaft in the meantime.
****
Sestak
The official White House position now that they got the Great Perjurer Bill Clinton to fall on the sword for them, but no one is letting up on them is ‘Talk to the hand’.
It’s all in the memo.
We have nothing to hide.
Obviously the Sestak affair has no intention of going away, but what will make the difference between this turning out to be a bump in the road and a life-threatening wreck is whether Sestak-gate is an isolated instance of Chicago-style political corruption, or part of a visible pattern.
On top of the Sestak offer, the president is now fending off concerns about a similar but possibly more serious case of offering government jobs to yet another maverick Democrat to get him out of a primary race.
Colorado state Rep. Andrew Romanoff said Wednesday that the White House discussed the possibility of three different government jobs that “might be available” if he agreed not to follow through and challenge incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado’s Democratic primary. Bennet was appointed senator early last year by Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter to fill the seat vacated by Ken Salazar, Obama’s choice for interior secretary.
An e-mail from deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina dated Sept. 11, 2009, alluded to two different posts with the U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as director of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency. That latter post ended up being filled by Leocadia Zak, who with her husband contributed more than $10,000 to the Obama campaign.
As if all that weren’t enough, the federal corruption trial of Illinois’ ousted Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, accused of trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat once held by Obama, will most likely require the testimony of Emanuel.
The only way to get to the bottom of all this is to get those involved under oath, have a dispassionate prosecutor ask them pointed questions and compare the cast of characters’ answers. Attorney General Eric Holder will have to decide whom his ultimate boss is — a president interested in damage control or the American people.
In the meantime, the president has some answering to do, because Sestak-gate and Romanoff-gate won’t go away. He will be asked whether “Change We Can Believe In” was just a well-timed — and ultimately deceptive — slogan.(IBD)
I’m shocked and appalled!
Corrupt Chicago Politics!
Never!
So what’s next for the Campaigner-in-Chief, a new tour?
Maybe he can vacation in Miami with all those Latinos who will be covered in Oil!
President Obama: “I’m in charge of oil spill cleanup”
But he’s a community orginizer, a Chicago political machine thug, an agitator, intimidator, not a Leader.
He forces people to bend to his will, not lead.
And Mother Nature has spoken.
She rained on his Memorial Day Speech.
So I guess it’s time for a new Crisis  so we can pass our 19th Century solutions called Cap & Trade.
After all, never waste a good crisis.
Never Lead, either.