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.
ACORN Received $53 Million, Another $8 Billion on the Way
Thank God someone with some sense. Michele Bachmann has written an amendment that would stop funding for any taxpayer funded organization under investigation or indicted.
First of all let’s see some of the charges brought against ACORN recently:
A voter registration worker for ACORN in East St. Louis was indicted on two counts of voter fraud for submitting forged cards for residents at nursing homes without their knowledge. – KSDK, 1/09
“A suburban Philadelphia man is charged with forgery, allegedly altering 18 voter-registration applications during his employment with an organization [ACORN] whose voter-outreach efforts have become a flashpoint in the presidential campaign.” – Associated Press, 10/23/08
“Clifton Mitchell helped register nearly 2,000 voters for the community group ACORN. But not one of them actually existed… Mitchell was convicted last year and spent nearly three months in prison.” – CNN, 10/22/08
“An internal report by a lawyer for the community organizing group Acorn raises questions about whether the web of relationships among its 174 affiliates may have led to violations of federal laws… The June 18 report, written by Elizabeth Kingsley, a Washington lawyer, spells out her concerns about potentially improper use of charitable dollars for political purposes; money transfers among the affiliates; and potential conflicts created by employees working for multiple affiliates, among other things.” – New York Times, 10/22/08According to the Economist in October of 2008 leading up to the Presidential election:
“In Orlando, home to the Magic Kingdom of Disney, Mickey Mouse tried to register. In Indiana there was an application from a sandwich shop called Jimmy Johns. Authorities in Nevada were surprised to receive voter registration forms from the starting line-up of the Dallas Cowboys.
“All these applications were provided by the Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group that works to register low-income voters. ACORN has been industrious this year, signing up 1.3m voters in 21 states according to its own tallies. But they have run into some trouble; thousands of their voter-registration applications are fakes. In Connecticut a seven-year-old girl applied. A man in Ohio admitted he had signed up with organizers more than 70 times in exchange for cash and cigarettes. In one county in Indiana ACORN turned in 5,000 applications, 2,100 of which were quickly identified as fakes.”
The Washington Examiner reports:
At least $53 million in federal funds have gone to ACORN activists since 1994, and the controversial group could get up to $8.5 billion more tax dollars despite being under investigation for voter registration fraud in a dozen states. The economic stimulus bill enacted in February contains $3 billion that the non-profit activist group known more formally as the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now could receive, and 2010 federal budget contains another $5.5 billion that could also find its way into the group’s coffers. An Examiner review of federal spending data found that ACORN has received at least $53 million in federal money since 1994. A down-loadable spreadsheet of the $53 million is posted here.
Bend over taxpayers! Don’t you love how your taxpayer money is going to fraudulent, corrupt organizations such as ACORN. The same ACORN that Obama was legal council for and spoke at their conventions? The same Obama who leaned on ACORN in this last election.
