ACTION! Cap & Tax… America’s Worst Nightmare
Late last Tuesday night the House Democrats made a deal on cap and tax (cap and trade) so the more conservative Democrats felt better about the bill and would ensure their vote for the legislation. The deal involved many of the Democrats from the mid-west and farm country where agriculture was a major concern for these representatives.
The House is prepared to vote on the bill to push it through the Senate by this Friday. Nancy Pelosi believes that given 2 days’ time she will have enough votes for a majority.
This bill is incredibly harmful, hurtful, expensive, and it quite frankly is one of the nastiest pieces of legislation I have seen in a long time. Liberals continuously use the straw-man argument that Republicans try to fear monger others into voting a certain way or believing certain things… I could say the exact same thing for GloBull warming, which is the biggest hoax of this century. In fact, when people finally wake up and figure out that the politicians are all in bed with “Green” companies, holding significant amounts of equity, and wanting legislation like this passed, not because it’s based on a true premise, but because it will line their pockets – then maybe common sense can reign supreme.
This cap and tax bill will have very little effect on the poorest – because they don’t pay taxes to begin with. They are leeches on productive society. The top quintile of the country, or the richest, will be burdened with this particular tax, but not as much as their federal income taxes. No, cap and tax will fall squarely on the middle class. Whether you are lower-middle class, middle, or upper, you will feel this significantly.
If you look at only the bottom quintile, C&T is more progressive than anything else in the federal tax system. But it’s downhill from there: The share of cap and trade paid by the middle quintile is three times the federal tax system’s average, and the share paid by the richest quintile is half that of the average.
I don’t really have a strong normative point to make here. Progressivity is in the eye of the beholder and all that. Nonetheless, I hope this puts some of the debate over the burdens of cap and trade in context.
If you are the least bit curious you can actually calculate the cap and tax burden on your household/family.
I have written several times regarding Cap and Tax – whether it was posting a video clip of Democrat Rep. Dick Durbin stating that all this legislation is one big tax, or Henry Waxman’s incompetency. I have written about our economy and how this will completely destroy sectors, increase the cost of living, increase our gas and energy prices, decrease our standard of living, and repress those who work hard to make a living.
Most of America disagrees with Cap and Trade, and congress was trying to come up with ways in wich they could cover up the bill and pass it off as some other cleverly deceptive rubbish:
The latest IBD/TIPP poll shows that cap and trade is a no go in the public eye. More people are beginning to understand what it actually entails/means. Indiana has also found a way around cap and trade this past week.
However, the Obama administration seems as though it may want to advance this agenda, but just under a different name.
How does the “The Clean Energy Divide” sound to you?
The Obama administration is exploring alternative names for cap and trade legislation.
People don’t really know what cap and trade means, but they don’t like it. So a new name is being concocted to gather support for the legislation.
It doesn’t look like the names “carbon tax” or “regressive tax” are in the mix, though. How does “clean energy divide” grab you?
WSJ: Seeking to bolster public support for climate legislation, the Obama administration is consulting pollsters who advocate avoiding phrases such as “cap-and-trade” and “global warming.” On Monday, the White House Council on Environmental Quality was scheduled to meet with Robert Perkowitz, president of ecoAmerica, a Washington-based nonprofit that uses “psychographic research” to “shift personal and civic choices of environmentally agnostic Americans,” according to its Web site.
“We’re trying to give them phrases that work,” Mr. Perkowitz said in an interview. He said that in a survey of some 2,000 Americans conducted by his group in March and April, less than half of the respondents said they would support a “cap-and-trade” policy, and that only 24% said they knew what the phrase means. “If you call it ‘clean energy dividend’…almost anything other than ‘cap and trade,’ you’ll get people responding a lot more favorably,” he said.
Isn’t that nice? let’s trick the American people so we can still strap the poor and the middle class with tax hikes to obtain our faulty liberal green agenda so Al Gore can receive a bunch of profits as well as GE, Google and Microsoft…
Not only will we have to ration Obamacare we will be back to rationing gas and unemployment will not only reach 10%, as Obama predicts, but higher – you cannot destroy the mining/coal industry and expect your unemployment rate to stay the same. Coal is one of the most abundant natural resources that America has… it is one thing that keeps us competitive abroad – and with this legislation you can kiss that goodbye. Is it really so “tin-foil” hat to think that the Democrats are in bed with foreign countries, selling out America for a little extra cash? (I’m sure we will also figure out who some of the Republican Reps./Senators are after the vote as well).
There still exist some principled Congress-critters and politicians, but they are few and far between. Michele Bachmann has been on the forefront of this debate, Jim DeMint is pretty outspoken when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility and unconstitutional legislation… but, other than that, it’s hard to make a case for most who waffle on their principles – so much so they may as well say “Leggo” my values.
The only way we can at least attempt to curtail the passage of this bill Friday is through melting the phones. Many of our represenatives won’t listen to our pleas or our common sense logic – believe me, my Senator and Represenative are Progressives! (Sarbanes & Cardin), but it’s still imperatiave that we at least try.
Find your Reps. here.
ACORN Mob Goes After NY Lawmaker and Attacks Top Aide
ACORN is becoming more of a spectacle and a mafia like outfit as the days pass. It isn’t as if independent thinkers didn’t already realize that ACORN is a corrupt scheme that has been in place for years helping politicians get elected illegally. The sad fact of the matter is that our taxpayer dollars fund this group and therefore we are paying for their antics and fraud, whether we want to or not.
The latest story from ACORN comes out of New York, where an angry mob of ACORN workers went after a NY lawmaker, James Alesi- Republican. The mob knocked him down and spat in the face of his top aide.
The protesters were reportedly upset that two Democratic senators decided to caucus with Republicans, a move that when finalized by the state Senate would hand Republicans control of it. Majority Democrats have shut down the chamber to prevent the transfer of power.
States around the nation, as well as several Republicans in Congress, have called for an investigation into ACORN and the eventual ban of the organization. Groups like ACORN are supposed to be common place in third world countries, not a Republic like the United States.
I’m still waiting for Obama to condemn this group…. I won’t hold my breath!
The below video is a great anti-ACORN clip:
The Truth About PayGo (Pay-As-You-Go)
As Michele Bachmann points out the devil is in the details:
What the Administration would like for you to think is that by enacting this policy, Washington wouldn’t be able to spend a dollar unless they save a dollar and the national debt would cease to swell as it has these past several months.
However, this is really a charade – and the details tell the story. First of all, this PAYGO has no impact whatsoever on entitlement spending — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which make up a very sizable portion of the budget. They’d continue to grow on autopilot. In fact, even if this PAYGO were fully enforced, entitlement spending would continue to grow 6% a year without offsets.
Second, this PAYGO includes an enormous $3.5 trillion loophole. The President’s proposal specifically exempts a wide array of expensive policies. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget remarked that, “This is like quitting drinking, but making an exception for beer and hard liquor.” And, Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee has criticized the plan, adding, “I’m not for waiving PAYGO for $3.5 trillion of items, much of which I think ought to be paid for.”
And more from the Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Obama must think the press and public are dumb enough to buy it, because there he was Tuesday re-selling the same “paygo” promises that Democrats roll out every election. Paygo is “very simple,” the President claimed. “Congress can only spend a dollar if it saves a dollar elsewhere.”
WSJ, Obama and the politburo have no respect for middle America, of course they think we are stupid!
That’s what Democrats also promised in 2006, with Nancy Pelosi vowing that “the first thing” House Democrats would do if they took Congress was reimpose paygo rules that “Republicans had let lapse.” By 2008, Speaker Pelosi had let those rules lapse no fewer than 12 times, to make way for $400 billion in deficit spending. Mr. Obama repeated the paygo pledge during his 2008 campaign, and instead we have witnessed the greatest peacetime spending binge in U.S. history. As a share of GDP, spending will hit an astonishing 28.5% in fiscal 2009, with the deficit hitting 13% and projected to stay at 4% to 5% for years to come.
Nancy Pelosi strikes me as the fiscally responsible type, the type that really cares what happens with taxpayer money. Well, I guess she does care, but that’s only when it’s used to pay for her botox injections and her flights back and forth to San Fran. in military aircraft.
The truth is that paygo is the kind of budget gimmick that gives gimmickry a bad name. As Mr. Obama knows but won’t tell voters, paygo only applies to new or expanded entitlement programs, not to existing programs such as Medicare, this year growing at a 9.2% annual rate. Nor does paygo apply to discretionary spending, set to hit $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2010, or 40% of the budget.
Does this not provide incentive to the government to create more entitlements to try and prove that PayGo was put to good use? New entitlements on top of too many old entitlements…
This loophole matters, because on the very day Mr. Obama was hailing paygo the House Appropriations Committee was gleefully approving a 12% increase in 2010 nondefense discretionary spending, the third year running that Democrats have proposed double-digit increases. Or consider that the 2010 budget resolution included a $2 billion increase for low-income heating assistance as an entitlement change that should be subject to paygo. But Congressional Democrats simply classified it as discretionary spending, thereby avoiding the need for $2 billion in cuts elsewhere. C’est-la-paygo.
Mr. Obama’s new proposal includes even more loopholes. There’s an exception for Congress’s annual alternative-minimum tax “patch,” which is worth at least $576 billion over 10 years; for any of the Bush tax cuts that Mr. Obama decides he wants to extend past 2010; and to protect against planned cuts in Medicare doctor payments. These carve-outs alone spare Democrats from having to come up with some $2.5 trillion in spending cuts or new taxes. To add insult to profligacy, the rules also allow the Administration to run huge early deficits for its looming health-care bonanza, and only pay for it later — say, after 2012.
The President also revived the myth that paygo was somehow responsible for eliminating budget deficits during the Clinton years. In fact, that brief era of balanced budgets was due to: mid-decade spending reductions by a GOP Congress elected on a balanced-budget pledge; an excessive cut in defense spending to 3% from 5% of GOP across the decade; and an unsustainable revenue boom due to the dot-com bubble. But harking back to the 1990s lets Mr. Obama avoid having to defend his own spending record.
The real game here is that the President is trying to give Democrats in Congress political cover for the health-care blowout and tax-increase votes that he knows are coming. The polls are showing that Mr. Obama’s spending plans are far less popular than the President himself, and Democrats in swing districts are getting nervous. The paygo ruse gives Blue Dog Democrats cover to say they voted for “fiscal discipline,” even as they vote to pass the greatest entitlement expansion in modern history. The Blue Dogs always play this double game.
Ahhh yes, more Kabuki theater, as Michelle Malkin so succinctly puts it.
The other goal of this new paygo campaign is to make it easier to raise taxes in 2011, and impossible to cut taxes for years after that. In the near term, paygo gives Mr. Obama another excuse to let the Bush tax cuts he dislikes expire after 2010, while exempting those (for lower-income voters) that he likes. In the longer term, if a GOP Congress or President ever want to cut taxes, paygo applies a straitjacket that pits those tax cuts against, say, spending cuts in Medicare. The Reagan tax reductions would never have happened under paygo.
We are so Scr—d! It’s like a game of chess they are playing – no concern for the country, just for their own political interests. If Obama is ousted in 2012 it makes it that much harder for the incoming administration to resolve the mess he created.
The Only Ones With Cajones in the GOP are Women; UPDATE: AUDIO ADDED (Under Excerpts)
Sarah Palin has been laying it on the line and with all the negative media attention she received last year, it shows that this woman knows she has nothing to lose and could care less what others think at this point. Her attitude is what is needed during this time of media propagandizing and kowtowing to the Democrats, especially Obama – it’s about time that somebody within the GOP actually stands on principle – not politics as usual, special interests, PC mumbo-jumbo, or money.
Palin has made statements regarding the North Korean missile threats and Obama’s budget cuts aimed at specific defense programs. Sarah has issued very poignant, concise, intelligent statements on Dr. Tiller and William Long (the military recruiter). She has vetoed some stimulus funds that had universal energy codes attached to them – something that Alaska certainly does not need. Sarah has also continued her fight for the gas pipeline. Governor Palin was most recently attending a rally in honor of Ronald Reagan, where son Michael Reagan, was the keynote speaker, in Anchorage. During a brief 17 minute introduction of Michael Reagan she made statements regarding the control government wants over not only the states, but us, as individuals. Have any GOP beltway hacks so much as inferred this?
Here is part of her speech:
“Since when can you get out of huge national debt by creating trillions of dollars of new debt?” Palin asked. “It all really is so backwards and skewed as to sound like absolute nonsense when some of this economic policy is explained.”
“We need to be aware of the creation of a fearful population, and fearful lawmakers, being led to believe that big government is the answer, to bail out the private sector, because then government gets to get in there and control it,” she said. “And mark my words, this is going to be next, I fear, bail out next debt-ridden states. Then government gets to get in there and control the people.”
“Some in Washington would approach our economic woes in ways that absolutely defy Economics 101, and they fly in the face of principles, providing opportunity for industrious Americans to succeed or to fail on their own accord,” she said. “Those principles it makes you wonder what the heck some in Washington are trying to accomplish here.”
Though the bulk of her remarks focused on government encroachment into the private sector, and praise for former President Reagan’s views on limited government, the former vice presidential candidate briefly touched on national security. She told the crowd that “the terrorists are still dead set against us” and that her son Track is still deployed in Iraq.
“It is war over there, so it will not be war over here,” she said. “And it had better still be our mission that we win, they lose.”She also pointed to the recent dismissal of another ethics complaint against her, one that accused the governor of having a conflict of interest for wearing a jacket to the opening of the Tesoro Iron Dog race in February that feautured the logo of the sponsor of her husband’s team. Palin has been forced to set up a legal defense fund to help pay for fees related to an onslaught of ethic complaints.
Palin said of the people who have filed the complaints: “Those are the folks who want to tell me, they want to tell you, to sit down and shut up. We will not do that. I just can’t, because I love my state. I love my country.”
Here’s a great quote that was left out since it was CNN that reported on it (just a little biased):
“I am just a mom; I’m a proud Alaskan hockey mom. I love my country, I’m concerned about my kids’ future and your kids’ future. I was raised where it is rugged, and you’ve got to be tough with dogged determination in order to survive sometimes.”
Governor Palin was introduced by Eddie Burke (a radio show host in Alaska) and he said the following:
“Pardon me Governor for saying this, but Barry Goldwater Jr. recently said ‘She is attractive, she is smart, she’s got the right message, and she doesn’t take crap from anyone.’”
Audio of her speech. (And yes, she does say “SCREW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS!!!”)
Michele Bachmann has also been incredibly outspoken over the last few months, especially regarding ACORN. She has been trying to pass legislation that would not allow ACORN or any other institution that receives tax payer funds, under investigation or indictment, to receive them, until all charges are officially dropped. This of course did not pass in the House, which is run by the Democrats – most likely because ACORN would have been affected and we know that dead voters always have positive effects for those trying to get elected in close races. Too many politicians would be indicted along with the dirty deeds of ACORN if this was ever investigated completely. However, Bachmann is starting a petition campaign to get this started and to end ACORN’s funding.
These are the types of people we need to keep our eye on and listen to. These are the politicians that are not afraid to speak their mind no matter what the repercussions, because they have character and believe in more than themselves – they believe in the individual; they believe in the USA.
Help out Michele and sign her petition here.
Liberals must also be noticing that the women on the right are the more involved, less fearful of the bunch – since they have to go after some of our women who aren’t even politicians, just pundits, bloggers, columnists and commentators, by writing an article about hate f***ing them… The tolerance of liberals never ceases to astound me.
Keep it up ladies!
