Dinesh D'Souza: How Obama Thinks

Via Forbes.com:

Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.

The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.

You will find the whole thing at this link.

So far, this is the best article I have seen yet that comes close to explaining what and who this nation voted to send to the White House in November of 2008.

See also the White House response here.

My take is, given the derision displayed by the White House over this, Mr. D'Souza must have hit pretty close to the center of the target.

(h/t: Everybody who emailed this to me)

John Stossel on Where'd the Jobs Go?

Via realclearpolitics.com:

Why isn't the economy recovering? After previous recessions, unemployment didn't get stuck at close to 10 percent. If left alone, the economy can and does heal itself, as the mistakes of the previous inflationary boom are corrected.

The problem today is that the economy is not being left alone. Instead, it is haunted by uncertainty on a hundred fronts. When rules are unintelligible and unpredictable, when new workers are potential threats because of Labor Department regulations, businesses have little confidence to hire. President Obama's vaunted legislative record not only left entrepreneurs with the burden of bigger government, it also makes it impossible for them to accurately estimate the new burden.

You will find the whole thing at this link.

We had better all hope that the American people walk into the polling stations this November and start the process of halting and reversing the economy-killing insanity that began with the passage of TARP and has only accelerated since.

We are running out of both chances as well as time to keep the good ship America from rolling over for good, as it is now listing perilously close to the tipping point.

"Recovery" Summer

Via www.atr.org:

• The Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats have said that they want to raise taxes in the top two income tax rates in January 2011. Under their plan, the 33 percent rate will rise to 36 percent, and the 35 percent rate will rise to 39.6 percent automatically in January. These rates affect families and small business owners earning at least $200,000 per year.

• 
  Unlike corporations, small businesses usually don’t pay their own taxes. Rather, business profits flow through to the business owner. The business owner pays taxes on her small business by adding the profits to her income tax form. Therefore, personal income taxes are the same thing as small business taxes.

• 
  According to the IRS, most small business profits pay taxes in households making more than $200,000 per year. The IRS keeps track of two types of small business income: sole proprietors, and “pass-through” entities like partnerships and S-corporations.

• 
  All small businesses. There were 30 million tax returns reporting small business income in 2008. On net (profits reduced by losses), these owners reported business profits of $631billion. A large chunk of this net profit--$457 billion—faced taxation in households making more than $200,000 per year. A majority of small business profits will face a tax rate hike under the Obama-Pelosi-Reid plan.

• 
  Sole proprietors. There were 22 million tax returns reporting sole proprietor income in 2008. On net (profits reduced by losses), these owners reported business profits of $264 billion. A large chunk of this net profit--$90 billion—faced taxation in households making more than $200,000 per year. 34 percent of sole proprietor profits will face a tax rate hike under the Obama-Pelosi-Reid tax hike plan.

• 
  S-corporations and partnerships. There were 8 million partners and S-corporation shareholders in 2008. On net (profits reduced by losses), these owners reported business profits of $367 billion. Virtually all of this profit faced taxation in households making more than $200,000 per year. Aggregate pass-through entity profits will almost entirely fall in households making more than $200,000 per year.
  

The above can be found in its original form here.

The Wall Street Journal has more here.

For someone who claims to want to "fix" our ailing private sector economy, the former community agitator seems to be doing all he can to destroy it.

Just Say No to Obama's Tax Hike

It has to start somewhere.

The Debt Monster is Upon Us

And it's about to bite us right in the ass.

Via Reason.com:

America’s financial situation is unsustainable. In 2009 the federal government spent $3.5 trillion but collected only $2.1 trillion in revenue. The result was a $1.4 trillion deficit, up from $458 billion in 2008. That’s 10 percent of gross domestic product, a level unseen since World War II. Worse, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that we’ll be drowning in red ink for the foreseeable future, with annual deficits averaging $1 trillion during the next decade.

While these figures are dramatic, they pale in comparison to what the federal government owes foreign and domestic investors. According to the CBO, in 2009 America’s public debt reached $7.5 trillion, or 53 percent of GDP, the highest it has been in 50 years. In 2010 the debt will cross the 60 percent threshold, a level at which many economists believe a country is putting itself in financial peril.

And the situation is deteriorating rapidly. Figure 1 compares the CBO’s long-term public debt projections from 2010 with long-term projections calculated in 2007. Three years ago, the CBO projected that the debt held by the public would not surpass 60 percent until 2023.

You will find the entire article at this link.

Scared yet? You should be shaking in your loafers.

I hope the American people are finally waking up to the imminent financial peril we face as a nation, as I believe the time we have to avoid disaster is growing very, very short.

Why is America in such Seriously Deep Doo-Doo?

Because we allow morons like this to vote in our elections:



Perhaps this blissfully ignorant Obamabot should have spent his time in government school actually learning how to read.


(h/t: Boortz.com)

Time to End Universal Suffrage?

Tom Tancredo makes his case:

---

---

The uncivil debate over civic illiteracy

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Posted: February 13, 2010
1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

After 35 years in politics, I am seldom surprised by the venom that flows from the mouths of liberals when one of their sacred cows is criticized. But the "fan mail" following my speech a week ago to the tea-party convention in Nashville has been truly amazing.

I spoke to the opening session of the event about why it is a good thing that John McCain was not elected president. I expected those remarks to be controversial in some quarters, but the only controversy in the news coverage of my speech was about my suggestion that we need a civics literacy test for voters.

Evidently, you cannot question the value of universal suffrage, and in the liberal lexicon, universal suffrage means not only that there should be no unreasonable or discriminatory bars to voting, but that all adults should be forced to vote, no matter how ignorant or disconnected to the civic affairs of the community.

I did not say in Nashville that all 67 million Obama voters are illiterate rabble who would fail a civics literacy test. What I did suggest and what I believe is that in the 2008 presidential election, the margin of victory for Obama was provided by people who would not be at the polls if we had meaningful civics literacy requirements for voting. Hence my statement that the lack of a civics literacy requirement is one reason we have a committed socialist ideologue in the White House today.

That statement provoked a stream of angry e-mail messages from outraged Obama voters, many of whom proudly proclaimed their advanced degrees in art history, Egyptology and political science. The message was as consistent as it was strident: What an ignoramus I must be to question the educational level of Obama voters!

My tea-party remarks had nothing to do with educational credentials or even IQ. We are all painfully aware that Barack Obama, like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton before him, got more votes from college professors than his Republican opponent. My remarks were aimed at the electorate's lack of civics literacy, which is quite different. Literacy in civics and American history is not necessarily enhanced by additional years of higher education devoted to increasingly specialized expertise in some field.

I have often suggested that new voters should be required to pass the civics literacy test already given to immigrants who want to become naturalized citizens. Yet, my suggestion was twisted into the idea that I want to see a return to "Jim Crow laws" that were used to keep blacks from voting.

This distortion of my proposal requires two acts of self-deception. First, it requires you to believe that minorities will fail any civics test, an idea that is highly insulting to all minorities. Secondly, it requires a willful disregard of the real history of Jim Crow laws. Blacks were not kept from voting by the laws themselves but the blatant discriminatory way they were administered by local officials. It is absurd to claim that any civics literacy test will be discriminatory, yet that is how my proposal was described by leftist bloggers and liberal journalists like E.J. Dionne.

Predictably, in this age of Internet video messaging

, left-wing blogs and liberal advocacy groups sent the video clip of my remarks to their members and asked them to "send Tancredo a message." The messages generated by this organized temper tantrum ran the gamut from questions about my patriotism to solemn prayers that I would get some horrible disease and die a painful death – and soon.

All our founders' inspiring, biblical quotes in one place – a must-have for your library: "America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations"

The potential for "elected despots" was well understood by our nation's founders, and they devised mechanisms in the Constitution to reduce that danger. They understood that throughout history, democracies had followed certain patterns and cycles, cycles ending in tyranny. So, instead of a pure democracy, they designed and established a republic organized as a representative democracy, with checks and balances and other innovations to help safeguard our liberties.

Voting your own short-term self-interest over the common good is a problem as old as Rome, but today it has taken on a new urgency. Using the powers of government to expropriate other people's wealth and property enters the pandemic stage when half the voting public pays no taxes

and a third of adults are government employees

or living on government pensions.

Can civics literacy programs in our schools and civics literacy tests for voters hold these forces in check? Maybe it's not the whole answer, but to me, it sure seems like a good start.

-End

Tom Tancredo's commentary was originally posted here.

I agree wholeheartedly with Rep. Tancredo. The votes of the stoopid and the illiterate (civic or otherwise) have pushed this nation right to the very edge of its destruction.

In fact, I would go one step further and restrict voting in national elections to only those who actually pay federal income taxes. Net tax consumers should have no say.

There is, after all, no constitutional right to vote in a national election.

If we continue to allow the non-productive to use the power of the federal government to take from the productive, the fate that Alexis de Tocqueville warned us about all those years ago is going to become a cold, stark reality.

Since the beginning of recorded history all free republics have shared one common trait: They all managed to vote themselves right out of existence.

Perhaps we might be the ones to finally break the chain.

The Government Wants Your Retirement Cash

Via Neal Boortz:

I've been telling you about this for a while now. This, to me, is one of the most dangerous schemes currently slithering through the crevices and dark spots of the Imperial Federal Government in Washington. What am I talking about? What I believe to be plans by the Obama administration to, in effect, seize your retirement funds and use them to finance their deficit spending. Remember ... there are more than $3 trillion dollars sitting out there in individual retirement, IRA and 401K plans. Politicians just cant stand the idea of this much money sitting out there in private investments ... out of the grasp of politicians. So .... Something needs to be done. And sure enough, something is going to be done. The Treasury Department and the Department of Labor were going to start taking comments on ways to promote the idea converting 401(k) savings and IRAs into annuities or other steady payment streams. Well you can finally take a look at this document for yourself:

Request for Information Regarding Lifetime Income Options for Participants and

Beneficiaries in Retirement Plans

Here, I'll post a little to get you started:

The Department of Labor and the Department of the Treasury (the "Agencies") are currently reviewing the rules under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and the plan qualification rules under the Internal Revenue Code (Code) to determine whether, and, if so, how, the Agencies could or should enhance, by regulation or otherwise, the retirement security of participants in employer-sponsored retirement plans and in individual retirement arrangements (IRAs) by facilitating access to, and use of, lifetime income or other arrangements designed to provide a lifetime stream of income after retirement. The purpose of this request for information is to solicit views, suggestions and comments from plan participants, employers and other plan sponsors, plan service providers, and members of the financial community, as well as the general public, on this important issue.

You will find Neal's entire article here.

Wake the hell up, sheeple. You are missing one hell of a coup.

Video: Herman Cain on the FairTax

Self explanatory.

Obama Open To Birdcage Liner Bailout

From The Hill:

The president said he is "happy to look at" bills before Congress that would give struggling news organizations tax breaks if they were to restructure as nonprofit businesses.

"I haven't seen detailed proposals yet, but I'll be happy to look at them," Obama told the editors of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Toledo Blade in an interview.
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) has introduced S. 673, the so-called "Newspaper Revitalization Act," that would give outlets tax deals if they were to restructure as 501(c)(3) corporations. That bill has so far attracted one cosponsor, Cardin's Maryland colleague Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D).

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had played down the possibility of government assistance for news organizations, which have been hit by an economic downturn and dwindling ad revenue.

In early May, Gibbs said that while he hadn't asked the president specifically about bailout options for newspapers, "I don't know what, in all honesty, government can do about it."

You can read the rest of article here.

Aside from the now obligatory disconnect between Obama and Gibbs that seems to be the MO for this crowd, as well as the fact that this will brign the idea of State Controlled Media that much closer to reality, I only have one thing to say:


What are these people not getting about the concept of NO MORE BAILOUTS!

There May Be Hope For Our Republic Yet

The Heritage Foundation has weighed in on the decidedly negative impact on our nation's economy that Cap & Trade (Waxman-Markey) would have should it pass and be signed into law. On June 22, Ben Lieberman, Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, testified before the United States Congress:

Overall, Waxman-Markey reduces gross domestic product by an average of $393 billion annually between 2012 and 2035, and cumulatively by $9.4 trillion. In other words, the nation will be $9.4 trillion poorer with Waxman-Markey than without it.

It should also be noted that the costs are not distributed evenly. Low-income households spend a disproportionate share of their incomes on energy, and thus would be hit harder than average by Waxman-Markey. Of course, the bill has provisions to give back some revenues to low-income households, but it is likely that these rebates will amount only to some portion of each dollar that was taken away from them in the first place in the form of higher energy costs and higher costs for other goods and services. Waxman-Markey also disproportionately burdens those states, especially in the Midwest and South, that still have a substantial number of manufacturing jobs to lose, as well as those that rely more heavily than others on coal for electric generation. In addition, because the bill raises energy costs, it hurts rural America much more than urban America. Rural Americans, farmers and non-farmers, spend an average of 58 percent more on energy as a percentage of income than their urban counterparts, and those costs would go up.

You will find the entire text of his eye-opening testimony here.

I find it mind-boggling that supposedly intelligent Americans would be pushing something that would essentially wreck our economy and cost us millions of jobs.

It really causes you to question the true motives of many in our government.

Crap & Tax Must Be Defeated

Yeah, I know the switchboards are overloaded and shooting off blue sparks now, and the email boxes are full, but keep trying anyway.

If you are unsure who your congress critters are, or how to reach them, go here and type in your zip code.

According to a tweet from Washington reporter Jamie Dupree, the vote will take place between 5pm and 6pm ET today. There is still time to stop this lunacy.

This hideous bill is insanity on a scale even I didn't think was possible. If ObamaCare alone doesn't turn America into a third world country, Crap & Tax most surely will. No real American who values freedom and liberty would ever support such an economy-killing measure as this is.

Any congress critter who votes for it should be drummed out of office and frog marched, at gun point, to the nearest international airport and given a one-way ticket to North Korea.

If the democrats (and some fence-straddling idiot republicans) aren't stopped cold, these morons are going to destroy our country, and that damned soon.