Democrats Want YOU to Pay Taxes, While They Avoid
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Via Freedom’s Lighthouse.
I wonder if Mr. Kerry’s wife (the one with all the money) won’t give him a big enough allowance to pay the taxes on that big boat.
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Obama Loses the Youth Vote
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WASHINGTON — Young voters who had been enthralled by Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can” message are now saying “Maybe not” — and are backing away from the president in a worrisome new poll for the White House.
Obama is losing in a match-up against a generic Republican challenger by 37 percent to 34 percent among voters in the 18-34 age group, according to a stunning Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday.
In March, voters in this group approved of Obama by 54 percent to 37 percent.
“The youngest age group may be the most impatient and the most easily disillusioned among all age groups,” said Molly Andolina, a youth-vote expert and DePaul University political-science professor.For many young voters in 2008, “it was the first time they’d been really been involved, really paying attention. This is someone telling them, ‘Yes, you can,’ ” she said.
Two years later, with a prolonged Gulf oil spill, “watching how slow it is to respond may be a little disillusioning,” she added.
Obama won an astounding 66 percent of the vote among the under-30 crowd, according to exit polls tracked by the Pew Research Center, the biggest winning percentage for a candidate since Richard Nixon in 1972.
In other poll results:
* Obama’s overall approval rating is 44 percent, with 48 percent disapproval — his worst score ever in the survey.
* The president trails an unnamed generic Republican among all voters by 39-36 percent.
* Voters disapprove of his handling of immigration by a stark 58-30 percent margin, with 60 percent saying the federal lawsuit against Arizona for its tough immigration crackdown is a bad idea.
* Obama beats Sarah Palin 49-45 percent in a 2012 match-up.
* Thirty-seven percent of voters say the country would be better off with John McCain as president, while 35 percent said it would be worse off.
Critically important independent voters continue to drift away from Obama, and disapprove of him by 52-38 percent.
A year ago, independents backed Obama 52-37.
I thought he was going to Change everything! It was all about Hope wasn’t it?
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The Great Obama Coverup
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It wasn’t just your imagination, there WAS a concerted effort in the media to cover up “difficult” stories about Obama in the run up to the election.
Sphere: Related ContentOthers went further. According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian, also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”
“Richard Kim got this right above: ‘a horrible glimpse of general election press strategy.’ He’s dead on,” Tomasky continued. “We need to throw chairs now, try as hard as we can to get the call next time. Otherwise the questions in October will be exactly like this. This is just a disease.”
(In an interview Monday, Tomasky defended his position, calling the ABC debate an example of shoddy journalism.)
Thomas Schaller, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun as well as a political science professor, upped the ante from there. In a post with the subject header, “why don’t we use the power of this list to do something about the debate?” Schaller proposed coordinating a “smart statement expressing disgust” at the questions Gibson and Stephanopoulos had posed to Obama.
“It would create quite a stir, I bet, and be a warning against future behavior of the sort,” Schaller wrote.
Tomasky approved. “YES. A thousand times yes,” he exclaimed.
Racism In Obama’s USDA
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Days after the NAACP clashed with Tea Party members over allegations of racism, a video has surfaced showing an Agriculture Department official regaling an NAACP audience with a story about how she withheld help to a white farmer facing bankruptcy — video that now has forced the official to resign.
Shirley Sherrod, the department’s Georgia director of Rural Development, is shown in the clip describing “the first time I was faced with having to help a white farmer save his farm.” Sherrod, who is black, claimed the farmer took a long time trying to show he was “superior” to her. The audience laughed as she described how she determined his fate.
“He had to come to me for help. What he didn’t know while he was taking all that time trying to show me he was superior to me was I was trying to decide just how much help I was going to give him,” she said. “I was struggling with the fact that so many black people have lost their farmland and here I was faced with having to help a white person save their land — so I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do. I did enough.”
The Agriculture Department announced Monday, shortly after FoxNews.com published its initial report on the video, that Sherrod had resigned.
Sherrod explained in the video that, at the time, she assumed the state or national Department of Agriculture had referred the white farmer to her. In order to ensure that the farmer could report back that she was indeed helpful, she said she took him to see “one of his own” — a white lawyer.
“I figured that if I take him to one of them, that his own kind would take care of him,” she said.
Disgusting.
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Obama Admin Sues AZ, Yet Sanctuary Cities are Okay
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How the Expiring Bush Tax Cuts Affect You
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You may have been led to believe that only individuals in the top two brackets will face higher federal income taxes when the Bush cuts go bye-bye. Not true! Unless Congress takes action and President Obama goes along, rates will go up for everyone — not just a sliver of the wealthiest Americans. The current six rate brackets of 10%, 15%, 25%, 28%, 33% and 35% will be replaced by five new brackets with the higher rates of 15%, 28%, 31%, 36% and 39.6%. Just a few months ago, it seemed like a safe bet that Congress would make a fix to keep the existing 10%, 15%, 25% and 28% rate brackets to help out lower and middle-income folks. That bet is now looking iffy.
Remember this?
Cut taxes for 95 percent of workers and their families with a tax cut of $500 for workers or $1,000 for working couples.
Yeah, Obama said that. He said this too:
Cut taxes for 95 percent of workers and their families with a tax cut of $500 for workers or $1,000 for working couples.
What happened to that Obama?
Or this:
Middle class families will see their taxes cut – and no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase.
Did you lie about that Obama?
What about this:
Families making more than $250,000 will pay either the same or lower tax rates than they paid in the 1990s.
Lies also?
Obama’s plan will cut taxes overall, reducing revenues to below the levels that prevailed under Ronald Reagan
And more lies.
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Cap and Trade WILL Destroy The Economy
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What’s left of it that is.
Sphere: Related ContentLast year, the House passed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. But now that 1400+ page bill is stalled in the Senate in large part because of its massive costs to Americans. To jump start the debate, Senators Kerry and Lieberman recently announced a new strategy to impose a cap-and-trade system on Americans — the inaptly named “American Power Act.” Senator Kerry no longer calls his various proposals “cap-and-trade,” but changing a bill’s name to disguise its intentions is a time-honored ruse in Washington.
To examine the economic impact of this plan, we performed an economic and distributional analysis of the cap-and-trade portion of the proposal. The following are some of the study’s key findings:
- The American Power Act would reduce U.S. employment by roughly 522,000 jobs in 2015, a number that rises to over 5.1 million jobs lost by 2050.
- Households would face a gross annual burden of $125.9 billion per year, or $1,042 per household, with costs disproportionately borne by low-income households.
- On a net basis, the top income quintile will benefit financially, redistributing to these households roughly $12.3 billion per year from the bottom 80 percent of earners.
- Households over age 75 bear the largest burden at 2.3 percent of income, followed by households aged 65-74 and under age 25 at 2.1 percent. By contrast, the nation’s highest-earning households between age 45 and 54 years would bear the smallest percentage burden of just 1.5 percent.
- Contrary to the legislation’s stated goal of reducing price volatility by excluding petroleum refiners from quarterly auctions, the Kerry-Lieberman bill is likely to significantly increase allowance price volatility from quarter to quarter, compared to an ordinary auction in which all covered industries bid for allowances.
Illegals Costs U.S. $113 Billion a Year
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One hundred and thirteen BILLIONS.
The cost of harboring illegal immigrants in the United States is a staggering $113 billion a year — an average of $1,117 for every “native-headed” household in America — according to a study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
The study, a copy of which was provided to FoxNews.com, “is the first and most detailed look at the costs of illegal immigration ever done,” says Bob Dane, director of communications at FAIR, a conservative organization that seeks to end almost all immigration to the U.S.
FAIR’s opponents in the bitter immigration debate describe the organization as “extremist,” though it is regularly called upon to testify before Congress.
Groups that support immigration reform immediately attacked FAIR’s report and pointed out that it is the polar opposite of the Perryman Report, a 2008 study that found illegal immigration was actually a boon to the American economy. It estimated that illegal immigrants add $245 billion in Gross Domestic Product to the economy and account for 2.8 million jobs.
The FAIR report comes as President Obama moves immigration reform to the top of his agenda, and it is likely to be a rallying point for those who oppose the president. At a speech Thursday at American University in Washington, D.C., Obama argued that the entire immigration system is broken and needs sweeping reforms. Among the changes he said are needed is “a path for [farm] workers to earn legal status,” which the president’s critics called an opening for a new amnesty program.
FAIR’s report argues that there are two choices in the immigration debate: “One choice is pursuing a strategy that discourages future illegal migration and increasingly diminishes the current illegal alien population through denial of job opportunities and deportations. The other choice,” it says, “would repeat the unfortunate decision made in 1986 to adopt an amnesty that invited continued illegal migration.”
The report states that an amnesty program wouldn’t appreciably increase tax revenue and would cost massive amounts in Social Security and public assistance expenses. An amnesty “would therefore be an accentuation of the already enormous fiscal burden,” the report concludes.
The single largest cost to the government of illegal immigration, according to the report, is an estimated $52 billion spent on schooling the children of illegals. “Nearly all those costs are absorbed by state and local governments,’ the report states.
No amnesty, no more free rides.
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The Largest Tax Hikes in History Hit in Six Months
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Via atr.org.
In just six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:
First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief
In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011:
Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%Higher taxes on marriage and family. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.
The return of the Death Tax. This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.
Higher tax rates on savers and investors. The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.
Second Wave: Obamacare
There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:
The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” 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).
The “Special Needs Kids Tax” 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.
The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. 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.
Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes
When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. The major items include:
The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.
Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear. Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000. 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.”
Read more: http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171##ixzz0sXGor1IB
I didn’t paste it all, so go read the whole thing while you’re basking in all the Hope and Change.
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DOJ official resigns over Obama’s racism
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Department of Justice attorney J. Christian Adams has now officially resigned over Obama’s racist refusal to allow the prosecution of armed Black Panthers who openly intimidated voters during Election 2008.
In a letter to the Washington Times, he called the case “the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law” he had ever seen in his entire career at the Justice Department and condemned Obama’s bigoted, dishonest handling of the case as “corrupt” and “indefensible.”
From the letter:
Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers. The dismissal raises serious questions about the department’s enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election.
Via The Examiner
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