Saturday, February 28, 2009
Friday, February 27, 2009
Lauer vs. Santelli
Today's Lauer is in the tank for Obama. Period. Is that what the American media have been reduced to? Presidential apologists?
Thursday, February 26, 2009
President Hussein Obama's Tax "The Rich" Folly
Take everything they earn, and it still won't be enough.
FEBRUARY 26, 2009, 3:47 A.M. ET
President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime."
This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.
Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts.
The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.
Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need.
But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.
Fast forward to this year (and 2010) when the Wall Street meltdown and recession are going to mean far few taxpayers earning more than $500,000. Profits are plunging, businesses are cutting or eliminating dividends, hedge funds are rolling up, and, most of all, capital nationwide is on strike. Raising taxes now will thus yield far less revenue than it would have in 2006. [More]
Class envy won't pay for President Hussein Obama's socialist schemes. There just aren't enough of "the rich" to fund his boondogles.
Obama is mortaging the future of our children AND grandchildren. He says he will cut the deficit by half but the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that, even if he does - and he WON'T if the bailouts continue, which they WILL -, it will be even more than the deficit he "inherited."
Yeah! Heck of a great job, Obama!
I See a Pattern: Obama Talks, the Market Tanks
Wednesday February 25, 2009, 1:00 pm EST
By Rodrigo Campos
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks fell on Wednesday as President Barack Obama's first address to Congress shed little new light on how he plans to stabilize the economy and shore up banks, and gloomy home sales data fed the negative sentiment.
Obama said in his speech on Tuesday night the United States would emerge stronger from the ongoing crisis, but investors found little in what he said to spur buying after the market's rebound on Tuesday from 1997 lows.
"He gave a very good speech in terms of making the citizens feel better about some of the things going on, but there is still a lot of work to be done," said Tim Smalls, head of U.S. stock trading at brokerage Execution LLC in Greenwich, Connecticut.
The housing data "is another dose of reality," he added.
Sales of previously owned U.S. homes plunged by a greater than expected 5.3 percent in January, an industry group reported.
Shares of financial services companies and big manufacturers led the market lower. Boeing (NYSE:BA - News) and IBM (NYSE:IBM - News) were the top drags in the Dow, with declines of 6 percent and 2.5 percent respectively. The S&P financial index (^GSPF - News) fell 4.4 percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average (DJI:^DJI - News) dropped 152.77 points, or 2.08 percent, to 7,198.17. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (^SPX - News) slipped 15.98 points, or 2.07 percent, to 757.16. The Nasdaq Composite Index (Nasdaq:^IXIC - News) shrunk 32.24 points, or 2.24 percent, to 1,409.59.
The slide marked a major setback after Tuesday's attempted rebound from 12-year lows hit a day earlier.
On Nasdaq, shares of First Solar (NasdaqGS:FSLR - News) , a maker of thin-film solar modules, fell about 21 percent to $108.81 after the company gave a bleak short-term outlook for the industry.
Financial shares made a short comeback after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in his second day of congressional testimony that regulators were not planning to nationalize Citigroup.
Shares of Citigroup (NYSE:C - News), down more than 60 percent year-to-date, briefly turned positive but later dropped 5 percent. The KBW bank index (Philadelphia:^BKX - News) fell 4 percent.
Shares of Lincoln National Corp. (NYSE:LNC - News) fell more than 19 percent after the company slashed its dividend more than 95 percent. The S&P Life Insurance index (^GSPLIFE - News) dropped 9 percent.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
Liberal Media Bias? What Liberal Media Bias?
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Friday, February 20, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Go, Santelli!
Finally, someone in the mainstream media is speaking out against the Obama madness. Rick Santelli's days on CNBC are numbered.
Obama's Culture of Corruption
By LARRY MARGASAK
Associated Press
Feb. 19, 2009, 1:01PM
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration and the new Congress are rapidly giving Republicans the same “culture of corruption” issue that Democrats used so effectively against the GOP before coming to power.
Democrats’ ethical issues are popping up at a dizzying pace, after less than two months of party control of both the White House and Congress. Freshman Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill. is only the latest embarrassment.
The only consolation is timing: It’s nearly two years until the next congressional election, giving Democrats a chance to stop the bleeding in time.
Republicans know all about bad timing on ethics issues. Their scandals developed over a longer period. But they were hurt most by a scandal that broke shortly before
the 2006 election. It was revealed that then-Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., wrote suggestive notes to former teenage male pages, and several Republican lawmakers and officials failed to act when they learned of the situation.
The Democrats stepped up their campaign theme of a “culture of corruption,” and it resonated all the way to the voting precincts. Democrats then regained control of the
House.
Senate Democrats were blindsided by Burris, because they believed what he told them, that he was clean. Burris now acknowledges that he tried to raise money for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who authorities say sought to sell President Barack Obama’s former Senate seat.
“The story seems to be changing day by day,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday.
The political mess for the Democratic Party, however, isn’t Burris’ conduct alone; it’s the pattern that has developed so quickly over the past few months.
Rangel
— The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., is the subject of a House ethics investigation. It’s partly focused on his fundraising practices for a college center in his name, his ownership financing of a resort property in the Dominican Republic and his financial disclosure reports.
Murtha
— Federal agents raided two Pennsylvania defense contractors that were given millions of dollars in federal funding by Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.
Blago
— Blagojevich was arrested Dec. 9 on federal charges, including allegations that he schemed to sell the Senate seat to the highest bidder.
Daschle
— Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota, abandoned his bid to become health and human services secretary and the administration’s point man on reforming health care; and Nancy Killefer stepped down from a newly created position charged with eliminating inefficient government programs. Both Daschle and Killefer had tax problems, and Daschle also faced potential conflicts of interest related to working with health care interests.
Geithner
— Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was confirmed to his post after revealing he had tax troubles.
Richardson
— Obama’s initial choice for commerce secretary, Bill Richardson, stepped aside due to a grand jury investigation into a state contract awarded to his political donors.
Lynn
— While the Senate voted overwhelmingly to confirm William Lynn as deputy defense secretary, Obama had to waive his ethics regulations to place the former defense lobbyist in charge of day-to-day operations at the Pentagon.
[More]
How can anyone expect transparency, accountability and clean government from a politician who rose to power from the primordial cesspool of Illinois politics?
Portrait of a Coward
President Hussein Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Friday, February 13, 2009
Obama 60, America 38
“The president made clear when we started this process that this was about jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. And what it’s turned into is nothing more than spending, spending and more spending.”-- House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), outraged over the content of President Hussein Obama's porkulus bill.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Wall Street Journal: Obama Wants Control of the Census
ACORN will have control over the census, folks. If confirmed as Commerce Secretary token Obama Republican Judd Gregg would effectively have NO power.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Obamallelujah!
President Obama is back in messianic campaign mode. It is unbecoming. When he’s not snarling at conservative opponents of his endless spending programs, he’s pandering to supporters as the nation’s community organizer-in-chief. At a stimulus rally in Ft. Myers, Florida on Tuesday, a woman named Henrietta Hughes stood up to decry the mortgage crisis and ask Obama for his personal help. Choking back tears, she
implored: “I have an urgent need…We need a home, our own kitchen, our own bathroom.”
If she had more time, she probably would have remembered to ask Obama to fill up her gas tank, too. The soul-fixer dutifully asked her name, gave her a hug, and ordered his staff to meet with her. Supporters cried “Amen!” and “Yes!” A young McDonald’s worker named Julio bolted out of his seat and exclaimed: “It is such a blessing to see you. Oh! Gracious God, thank you so much! Ungh!”
The event turned into a full-blown revival meeting when Obama announced that the Senate had passed his massive stimulus plan. Audience members erupted into applause. Tongues of fire descended from the sky. Loaves and fishes (or rather, pork and Kool-Aid) multiplied miraculously into trillions for all. GOP Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina didn’t know how right he was when he warned over the weekend: “We’re moving precipitously close to what I would call a savior-based economy.”
Like Mighty Mouse, President Obama is here to save the day. The government is here to help – and it is your patriotic duty to pay for it all without preconditions. Henrietta Hughes didn’t explain the cause of her financial turmoil. Obama didn’t ask. And if we conservatives dare to question the circumstances – and the underlying assumption that it is government’s (that is, taxpayers’) role to bail her out – we’ll be lambasted as cruel haters of the downtrodden.
Woe unto ye unbelievers in Big Government who cling to what Obama derided as “ideological rigidity.” [More]
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
President Hussein Obama's Liberal Eugenics: Elderly Hardest Hit
Commentary by Betsy McCaughey
Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Republican Senators are questioning whether President Barack Obama’s stimulus bill contains the right mix of tax breaks and cash infusions to jump-start the economy.
Tragically, no one from either party is objecting to the health provisions slipped in without discussion. These provisions reflect the handiwork of Tom Daschle, until recently the nominee to head the Health and Human Services Department.
Senators should read these provisions and vote against them because they are dangerous to your health. (Page numbers refer to H.R. 1 EH, pdf version).
The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.
But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.”
Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.
New Penalties
Hospitals and doctors that are not “meaningful users” of the new system will face penalties. “Meaningful user” isn’t defined in the bill. That will be left to the HHS secretary, who will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time” (511, 518, 540-541)
What penalties will deter your doctor from going beyond the electronically delivered protocols when your condition is atypical or you need an experimental treatment? The vagueness is intentional. In his book, Daschle proposed an appointed body with vast powers to make the “tough” decisions elected politicians won’t make.
The stimulus bill does that, and calls it the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (190-192). The goal, Daschle’s book explained, is to slow the development and use of new medications and technologies because they are driving up costs. He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
Elderly Hardest Hit
Daschle says health-care reform “will not be pain free.” Seniors should be more accepting of the conditions that come with age instead of treating them. That means the elderly will bear the brunt. [More]
Here it is: Obama's (final) health care solution. Let them die. Heck of a job, Barack!
Monday, February 09, 2009
Hussein Obama's First Two Weeks: Fox's Beck Breaks It Down
Two weeks of recantations, reversals, missteps, broken promises and promises that should have been broken.
Hussein Obama, The Lying Klutz, Bumps Head on Marine One
In the days of President George W. Bush, this would be treated as yet another example of what a klutz he is. Now, MSNBC reports that Hussein Obama bumped his head on Marine One because he was "distracted."
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Hussein Obama's "Bipartisanship" Myth
Partisanship Is a Worthy Foe in Debate on Stimulus
By Jackie Calmes
Published: February 6, 2009
WASHINGTON — With the Senate on track to pass its version of the economic stimulus legislation, President Obama is widely expected to win final Congressional approval of the plan soon, and thus make good on an assortment of his campaign promises. But in the process, he is confronting the impediments to his most ambitious pledge: to end the capital’s partisan warfare.
Mr. Obama has been frustrated by an array of forces, from an often bitter and personal history of partisanship on Capitol Hill to the near-extinction of Republican moderates in the House to the deep ideological gulf between the parties on economic policy. And as his aspiration of putting aside petty politics has met the necessity of winning legislative votes — no more than two or three Senate Republicans are expected to support him, which is two or three more than did so in the House — he has gone through a public evolution that has left him showing sharper edges when it comes to the ways of Washington.
Frustrated that debate over the bill was being dominated by Republicans’ criticism, and that his overtures had yielded little in the way of support from across the aisle, the president who began the week hosting Republicans for a Super Bowl party had by Friday switched to publicly pressuring them, and rallying fellow Democrats, with a hard-line message about his unwillingness to compromise his priorities. Mr. Obama seized on Friday’s worse-than-expected jobless numbers to criticize the Senate impasse as Republicans withheld the few votes he needs. “It is inexcusable and irresponsible to get bogged down in distraction and delay while millions of Americans are being put out of work,” he said. Americans, he added, did not want lawmakers “to turn back to the same tried and failed approaches that were rejected in the last election.”
His comments came on Day 3 of Mr. Obama’s counteroffensive. As the Senate debated the package this week, he initially stayed above the fray, giving Republicans leeway to add tax breaks and hoping their support for the overall plan would follow. When it did not, he began speaking out on Wednesday, even as he privately kept reaching out to a few Republicans: including, unsuccessfully, Senator John McCain of Arizona. White House aides say that Mr. Obama will continue reaching out, but that bipartisanship should not be measured simply by how many Republican votes the final product gets.
The president is “not alarmed” by the dearth of Republican support so far, said Daniel H. Pfeiffer, the deputy White House communications director. “There’s a long process of building trust here.” That process inevitably raised questions of whether Mr. Obama’s reaching out was more style than substance. He has hosted individual Republicans at the White House for cocktails and talks in the Oval Office, and last week made his first trip to the Capitol as president to meet with all House and Senate Republicans, overtures that won him points for style.
But the president made plain from the start that he would go only so far in altering an economic plan that embodies much of the agenda that helped get him elected. He told House Republicans, for example, that he would not back down from his proposal that a middle-class tax credit should also go to workers who earn too little to pay income taxes but who do pay payroll taxes. Most Republicans oppose that.
The urban myth that President Hussein Obama is interested in bipartisanship is an administration construct in partnership with the willing liberal media establishment. The president's recent contrived overtures toward Republicans (i.e. SuperBowl party, after hours cocktails) were just that. All show and no substance.
My favorite bit from this article is:
"White House aides say that Mr. Obama will continue reaching out, but that bipartisanship should not be measured simply by how many Republican votes the final product gets."So, how will the president measure "bipartisanship?" What Hussein Obama really wants is unconditional support for his porkulus bill. Once Republicans refused to go along with that monstrosity, he started throwing temper tantrums in the media. Sure he won the election, but that does not mean Congress is obligated to give him whatever he wants. We are still in a democracy. I am not sure for how long, but we still are.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Has Tom Daschle Driven a Pontiac Lately?
Is this same guy who failed to pay $128,000 in taxes for a chauffeur and car service?
President Hussein Obama "Owns Up" to Daschle "Mistake"
Daschle Ends Bid for Post; Obama Concedes Mistake
WASHINGTON — Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination as secretary of health and human services on Tuesday after weathering four days of scrutiny over unpaid taxes, prompting President Obama to concede having “screwed up” in undermining his own ethical standards by pushing the appointment.
Tom Daschle on Monday called his failure to pay taxes "completely inadvertent." He also said, "But that's no excuse."
“I’ve got to own up to my mistake, which is that ultimately it’s important for this administration to send a message that there aren’t two sets of rules,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with NBC News. “You know, one for prominent people and one for ordinary folks who have to pay their taxes.”
Mr. Daschle, a closer confidant to Mr. Obama than any other cabinet nominee, had offered to step down over the weekend, but officials close to both men said Mr. Obama had urged him to fight for confirmation.
Mr. Daschle went to Capitol Hill on Monday to keep his confirmation on track, but by Tuesday morning, with the pressure showing no signs of easing, he told the president that he believed he had become a distraction and too wounded to be effective.
It was the rockiest day yet for the new White House. Two hours before Mr. Daschle withdrew, Mr. Obama’s nominee to be the chief White House performance officer, Nancy Killefer, pulled her name from consideration because of unpaid payroll taxes for a household employee.
Is this the "change you can believe in?" Obama's hypocrisy is blatant here.
Saying it was a "mistake" to send a message that there are two sets of rules, one for those who pay taxes and another for those who don't is beyond shameless. That's exactly the message he sent because it was the conduct he exhibited. The truth is, it didn't matter to President Hussein Obama that Daschle, Killefer and now Treasury Secretary (TREASURY Secretary!) Geithner are tax cheats before he nominated them to cabinet positions.
But then again, what kind of conduct is to be expected from a politician who crawled out of the Chigago primordial cesspool?