Democrat Culture of Corruption

How “Progressive” is our Tax System?

tiredoflibbs41 Comments

Professor and chairman of the economics department at Harvard University, Greg Mankiw, took the latest CBO report and ran some numbers for 2009, the most recent year for which we have records.   He wanted to look at not only the amount of taxes someone paid, but also how much money individuals got BACK from the government in the form of refundable tax credits, welfare payments, entitlements and other government goodies.

So here are his calculations for the taxes each income level pays.  What this economist measured here is the amount of taxes the members of these income groups paid TO the government minus the amount of money these people got back in the form of various government payments:

Bottom quintile: -301 percent
Second quintile: -42 percent
Middle quintile: -5 percent
Fourth quintile: 10 percent
Highest quintile: 22 percent
Top one percent: 28 percent

As Mankiw explains the bottom quintile of Americans are essentially receiving $3 in UNEARNED income from the taxpayers for every dollar they earn.  He also points out something rather critical, and this is the fact that the middle quintile of taxpayers is in the negative, which means that they are net tax consumers.  That is almost a 20 point swing since 1979, when middle income earners were tax contributors.

This explains how 50% of Americans pay no income taxes at all … and instead absorb tax money paid by others.

As Ben Franklin has said:

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.

http://jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu/poor_richard.html

These FACTS do not bode well with the proggy LIE, in their class warfare, that the “rich are not paying their fair share”!

obAMATEUR Expands the Dependent Class AGAIN and Bypasses Congress!

tiredoflibbs78 Comments

Let’s look at this pResident’s accomplishments:

  • Government takeover of 17% of the economy and your health care.
  • Doubling the number of Americans on food stamps.
  • Spanish soap operas to encourage Hispanics to sign up for food stamps.

And now……

Since the beginning Obama intended to reverse the welfare reforms made by the Republican majority when Clinton was president.  Those reforms freed millions of Americans from their government dependency.  This is not the direction in which Obama wants to travel.

The Obama administration via the Department of Health and Human Services has essentially rewritten the rules established by the welfare reform law of 1996.  The new policy, as per the Obama administration, will no longer require welfare recipients to work in order to maintain their benefits.

(For those who cannot connect the dots)FROM THE MEMO:

Waivers will be granted only for provisions related to section 402.

Of the roughly 35 sections of the TANF law, only one is listed as waiveable under section 1115. This is section 402.

Section 402 describes state plans—reports that state governments must file to HHS describing the actions they will undertake to comply with the many requirements established in the other sections of the TANF law. The authority to waive section 402 provides the option to waive state reporting requirements only, not to overturn the core requirements of the TANF program contained in the other sections of the TANF law.

The new Obama dictate asserts that because the work requirements, established in section 407, are mentioned as an item that state governments must report about in section 402, all the work requirements can be waived. This removes the core of the TANF program; TANF becomes a blank slate that HHS bureaucrats and liberal state bureaucrats can rewrite at will – or mealy mouthed words as “innovation”..

Therefore, states and other bureaucracies can DEFINE WORK as they attempted before but were overridden.

Over the years, the definition of “work” began to deteriorate and in 2005, Congress tried to reign in the definition of what constitutes “work” in order to receive welfare.   Barack Obama, a Senator at that time, was opposed to this effort – no surprise there.

Here is a SENATE report as to what states have attempted to define as work:

http://www.finance.senate.gov/newsroom/ranking/release/?id=47ada91c-07ac-4c7f-bc20-182df03d2654

Some of these include:
1.    Bed rest
2.    Personal care activities
3.    Massage
4.    Exercise
5.    Journaling
6.    Motivational reading
7.    Smoking cessation
8.    Weight loss promotion
9.    Participating in parent teacher meetings
10.  Helping a friend or relative with household tasks and errands

These are what casper tried to pass off as “innovation”. How Sec. of HHS can grant waivers to states that have these activities (or whatever else) in their innovative plans (Section 402).

So, when he says “moving in the right direction”, I guess this is it – EXPANDING the dependent class!

Question is, does this pResident have the authority to do this – reverse law WITHOUT CONGRESS!  I mean this has never stopped him before!!

The Heritage Foundation reminds us of the growing list of Obama administration actions that it has taken to circumvent the legislative process.

  • Even though the Democrat-controlled Senate rejected the President’s cap-and-trade plan, his Environmental Protection Agency classified carbon dioxide, the compound that sustains vegetative life, as a pollutant so that it could regulate it under the Clean Air Act.
  • After the Employee Free Choice Act—designed to bolster labor unions’ dwindling membership rolls—was defeated by Congress, the National Labor Relations Board announced a rule that would implement “snap elections” for union representation, limiting employers’ abilities to make their case to workers and virtually guaranteeing a higher rate of unionization at the expense of workplace democracy.
  • After an Internet regulation proposal failed to make it through Congress, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it would regulate the Web anyway, even despite a federal court’s ruling that it had no authority to do so.
  • Although Congress consistently has barred the Department of Education from getting involved in curriculum matters, the Administration has offered waivers for the No Child Left Behind law in exchange for states adopting national education standards, all without congressional authorization.
  • Since it objects to existing federal immigration laws, the Administration has decided to apply those laws selectively and actively prevent the state (like Arizona) from enforcing those laws themselves.
  • Rather than push Congress to repeal federal laws against marijuana use, the Department of Justice (DOJ) simply decided it would no longer enforce those laws.
  • DOJ also has announced that it would stop enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act or defending it from legal challenge rather than seeking legislative recourse.

These are the actions of a RULER, not a leader. It’s too bad more Americans haven’t focused on the words of Valerie Jarrett – the head of Obama’s transition team – days before his inauguration:  “We will be ready to RULE from day one.”

ImageImage

Making an End of the Nauseating “Race Card” and Other Liberal Lies

Mark Noonan59 Comments

The latest blatant, disgusting lie from the left is that the attacks on Holder over “Fast and Furious” are the result of a racist, GOP campaign to discredit and remove Holder because he, and he alone, stand between us and our nefarious plot to suppress the vote.  This is not the first such lie to be floated in our political discourse, but we should make it the last.

Let us stand forth, fellow Americans, between now and November 6th and do what needs to be done to restore decency in our public life.  Enough of race-baiters on the left poisoning America.  Enough of all these liberal groups with their tax-free status and revolving door between them and the bureaucracy.   Enough of essentially paying liberals to slander us.

Obama needs to not just be beaten, but crushed – and after he is crushed it is time for us to go after the left with a will and chase them entirely out of the halls of power.  Go after them – investigate them inside and out.  I’m confident that once we start turning over the rocks we’ll find all sorts of disgusting things scattering in the light.  This is not about revenge – this is about cleansing our public life from a force of people who, essentially via taxpayer subsidy, make life miserable for all Americans who won’t bow the knee to liberalism.  For decades now our liberals have lived on the Big Government gravy train – having nothing to do all day long but devise ever higher taxes, ever more regulations – and ever more smear campaigns against anyone who dissents from liberal orthodoxy.  Holder is just a product of this – and those defending him by accusing us of racism are also a product of this liberalism-government complex designed to, come what may, thwart the rule of law and the will of the American people.

If we want to be free – if we want to preserve our constitutional republic – then it isn’t enough to just beat Obama.  Obama and Holder are not the problem – they are just symptoms of the problem.  If it wasn’t Holder running roughshod over law and justice then it would just be some other liberal.  In order to have real victory, we have to defeat the entirety of the left – we must, that is, destroy all the liberal lies because if one of them lives then the others will revive.

 

 

Government Spending. Does It Really Work as a “Stimulator”?

tiredoflibbs88 Comments

Listening to obAMATEUR, his fellow looters, the moochers and the mindless drones, you would think that the Stimulus and the rest of the over $5 TRILLION in spending by our so-called “leader” would have had a huge effect on the economy.  They would be touting this into the next term.

Sadly, for the looters, this is not the case.  Private spending is needed for the economy to produce the fruit we have seen from successful administrations like Reagan’s.

We have a study now published in the National Journal of Economic Research from University of California at San Diego economist Valerie Ramey.  Ramey puts the proggies lies about the success of their spending schemes to rest.

According to Ramey: “An increase in government spending never leads to a significant rise in private spending.  In fact, in most cases it leads to a significant fall.”

“A significant fall”…… say it again…..  “A significant fall……”  One true measure of the proggy belief have been the headlines concerning the economy and job growth – “an UNEXPECTED FALL in economic grown” or “an UNEXPECTED RISE in unemployment claims”, etc etc.

We already know that obAMATEUR believes that the United States is great and successful because of “government investment” code for “spending”.  Ramey also finds that government spending increases government employment .. but not private employment.

That’s it liberals keep charging on your “Bank of China” credit card and kick the can down the road to our children and grand-children.  ObAMATEUR used those words as senator when criticizing President Bush.  But those words are no longer part of his rhetoric (or any other proggy’s for that matter) while he is the one in charge.  Come November, those words will make another appearance when the proggies no longer control the White House.

UPDATE:

The budget proposed by the obAMATEUR 2012 will result in a DEFICIT of $26 trillion dollars by 2022.   If you were to spend $1,000 per minute, it would take you about 49,000 YEARS to spend $26 trillion dollars.  The obAMATEUR will do it in ONLY 10 years! What an accomplishment! – any you proggy drones whine I cannot compliment your pResident.

That’s the debt your children and grandchildren are going to have to pay.  Here is another compliment – He sure spends other people’s money very rapidly.

We can’t afford another four years of this bozo and his fellow looters.  BTW,  I am sure this budget will be UNANIMOUSLY defeated like his others.  But he will blame only the non-proggies and his loyal drones will regurgitate the dumbed down talking point.

Obama’s Stimulus: Nothing but a Democrat Slush Fund

Mark Noonan6 Comments

Just in case any of you out there ever thought that Obama and his Democrats actually cared about America – from Breitbart:

In their explosive new book Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, Grover Norquist and John Lott, Jr. uncover a startling fact: heavily Democratic states with lower poverty rates, lower unemployment rates, lower bankruptcy rates, and lower foreclosure rates received most of President Barack Obama’s $825 billion Stimulus.

Put another way, Stimulus money went to precisely the states that needed it the least but were more politically connected to the Democratic Party….

You think that any Democrat leader out there believes that the money of the American people should be fairly distributed among those who need it most?  Oh, come on – if that were the case, the local Catholic Charities here in Las Vegas would have plenty of food to feed the homeless.  But, where is the upside in that for our Democrat wheeler-dealers?  Who gets paid when a bum gets fed?  For crying out loud, next you’ll be wanting to spend some “shovel ready” money to actually fix up distressed neighborhoods rather than having it spent on some more Solyndras!

There is a vile odor about the United States these days – something has gone horribly wrong.  Not just with Obama, of course – he’s just the tail-end-Charlie of a long, hideous string of events.  The capstone of a oozing pile of lies, swindles, hatreds and fears which have been used to extract power and wealth from the American people and transfer it to leeches and tin-plated tyrants.  And don’t get me wrong, here – there are plenty who claim to be Republican who are very much part of the problem.  But it is the left and its captive Democrat party which had led the way to degradation and which has nearly wrecked this nation.

We’ve really got to work hard for the rest of the year, folks – if you think things have been bad since 2009, just wait until a re-elected Obama gets to be flexible about things in 2013.

A Real Leader Gives Credit and Takes Responsibility While obAMATEUR Takes Credit and Shirks Responsibility.

tiredoflibbs75 Comments

What makes a leader?

Does this pResident have the abilities to be a leader?

This was the President that had “to descend his throne to become President” was going to “heal the planet”, “stop the rising oceans”, “improve relations with other nations”, “fix the economy”, “pay down the debt”, “balance the budget” etc. etc.  His failures just keep piling up.  But to listen to him, it is someone or something else’s fault – the tsunami, the Arab Spring, flooding, the evil Republicans, Big Oil, the Chinese and on and on and on…..

While, of course, our resident leftist, mindless drones would say “YES! HE IS A LEADER”.  His actions and record say otherwise.

Have at it! (It seems our resident leftist drones cannot comment on the more cerebral topics.  That is a little harsh…They cannot defend the indefensible.  Here is somewhat of an open topic for them to repeat their talking points.)

 

Regarding One-Trick Ponies.

Leo Pusateri26 Comments

The cover from this month’s edition from my teacher’s union magazine:


Minnesota, like many other states, is about to become a “Right To Work” state, and it is the unions themselves that are unwittingly helping it to happen.

The unions and the democrat party have long had a nearly exclusive, symbiotic relationship. As long as the democrats remained in power, the unions were protected by the democrats; and in turn, the unions were free to act in a blatantly partisan fashion and be an unrepentant, militant arm of the democratic party.

Because of this relationship, the unions never had to worry about public relations. They could afford to be as-in-your-face-nasty-as-they-damned-well-wanted-to-be. Conservative rank-and-file members were summarily ignored. They didn’t care what the average non-union person thought. They didn’t care about winning the hearts and minds of the average American voter. They were quite comfortable in their roles as the enforcement/thug/footsoldier arm of the democratic party. But now that the democrats are largely out of power in Minnesota, as well as in a host of other state legislatures, the unions are suddenly finding themselves in the precarious position of being the toady left on a street corner whose protector has suddenly left the scene.

Now, given that “Right To Work” will no doubt make it on the ballot this November as a Constitutional amendment in Minnesota (and other states) , one would think that the unions’ very survival would depend on improving their public image. One would think that the unions would be running a full court press on public relations, running ads 24/7 extolling their virtues, and the services that their members provide to the public.

But instead, the public unions, including the teacher’s unions (of which I’m a member) have doubled-down on their self-serving, narcissistic thuggery. They haven’t yet awakened to the fact that with Right to Work going to the ballot this fall, it will no longer be the legislators (whom they used to have in their hip pocket) that they’ll have to convince. They’ll have to convince the very voters of Minnesota why they should remain a viable, omnipotent, political force.

Ergo, when the union leadership organize angry demonstrations like so many 60s hippie throwbacks or cadres of Bolsheviks running roughshod in near-riotous mobs, they’re not doing themselves any favors. At the same time,  they just don’t seem to have a clue as to just how precarious their position is, or how to fix it.

Up to this point, Minnesota’s teacher and other unions, having had the luxury of being able to act like spoiled teenagers; largely without consequence, have been virtual one-trick ponies in terms of defaulting to in-your-face, thuggish tactics to get demands met.

But as Minnesota native Bob Dylan once crooned, “Oh the times, they are a changing.”

If Minnesota’s unions want to survive, they better damn well change with them.

obAMATEUR Continues His LIE – He Is Responsible For Increased Drilling

tiredoflibbs76 Comments

obAMATEUR stepped up his rhetoric on oil production and gas prices. Rightly or wrongly, the American people are blaming Obama for the cost of their latest fill-up. So obAMATEUR’s solution? Mislead the American people and pepper them with over-the-top rhetoric. For example, yesterday he tried to emphasize his (non-existent) drilling record: “So do not tell me that we’re not drilling. We’re drilling all over this country. There are a few spots we’re not drilling. We’re not drilling in the national mall. We’re not drilling at your house.”

Clever. But unfortunately those are not the FACTS. Just last weekend, Obama addressed the nation and stated that “[u]nder my Administration, oil production in America is at an eight-year high. We’ve quadrupled the number of operating oil rigs, and opened up millions of acres for drilling.”

Once again, let’s dispel these myths. (Myths, hell. They’re LIES.)

Oil production is at an eight-year high?

The US Energy Information Administration has finally put this one to bed. After looking at data from 2003 to 2011, production on federal lands under obAMATEUR was lower than all but one year of the Bush administration, and it hit rock-bottom in 2011. In fact, production alone dropped by 6% from 2010-2011 to its lowest level in nine years.

We’ve quadrupled the number of oil rigs?

I guess it is easy to claim that you’ve increased something, when you literally put a halt to it early in your administration. In 2010, after the BP oil spill, take a look at this gimmick pulled by the obAMATEUR administration … from the Institute of Energy Research, “The obAMATEUR administration would like you to think that major strides have been taken to increase drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. But, that is hardly the case. The administration has been touting the four drilling permits it has issued, but in reality, but these are not new permits—they have only reissued four permits that it suspended last year.” Also remember that the obAMATEUR administration held just one offshore lease sale in all of fiscal year 2011. President Bush’s energy plan called for five.

We’ve opened up millions of acres for drilling …

Under “the one we have been waiting for”, the federal government has leased less than half of the offshore acres that President Clinton did. In 2010 the federal government issued the lowest number of onshore leases since 1984. Our Dear Ruler is also blocking access to 19 billion barrels of oil in the Pacific and Atlantic coasts and the eastern Gulf of Mexico, another 10 billion barrels estimated in the Chukchi Sea off the Alaskan coast, and another 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.

You are being LIED to and you drones just suck it up like ambrosia.

While Bush was President, the Democrats (and their willing propagandists in the media) never failed to bludgeon him with the full blame for rising gas prices.  Pelosi (and her mindless regurgitating drones) maintained that it was the “Two Oil Men in the White House”.  Now that they are in charge and their “man” is in the White House the LIES and the EXCUSES fly – “the President has no direct control of the oil/gasoline market”.  But as I said, Bush was totally responsible, while their “leader”, who has no tangible and realistic energy policy, is completely blameless.  The libs favorite talking point is that it will be a decade before drilling can have an impact and in the same breath, their “green and renewable” energy is a viable solution all of which is more than a decade away from fruition.

Again, you are being LIED to drones, why to you regurgitate the dumbed down talking points?  In your case, ignorance is definitely BLISS.

Hat tip: Neal Boortz

Thou Shalt Not Have Strange gods…

Leo Pusateri76 Comments

Eleven million taxpayer-funded dollars.  Supposedly to help 400 people in Detroit find jobs.  Even if every one of those 4o0 people found a job, that would be $27,500 in taxpayer money spent, per job.  Ludicrous enough, no?

Well, what if only TWO (2) of those 400 people found jobs?

A chunk of an $11 million stimulus grant meant to provide low-income Detroit residents with clothing for job interviews reportedly aided just two people — far short of the 400 job-seekers the money was meant to help.

The findings were part of a new audit on the city’s Department of Human Services, according to The Detroit News.

That, my friends, comes to a cost of $5.5 MILLION dollars.  Per job.  Nice return on investment there, Barry.
Fast forward to yesterday (emphases added):

In the wake of lobbying by President Obama and Senate Democratic leaders, the Senate Thursday defeated legislation to speed up construction of a U-S.-Canadian oil pipeline.The White House victory came after the president started personally calling Democratic senators Wednesday night. The vote underscored the extent to which rising gas prices and energy supply have become a central political issue.

So, to Barack Obama, a stimulus program that costs taxpayers hundreds of millions, and which is a failure by any clear-thinking person’s standards is hailed as a success; while killing a program that creates at least 25,000 jobs, all without a dime of taxpayer money, is somehow considered a ‘victory.’

To Barack Hussein Obama, nothing can be successful; nothing can be true and real unless it is a direct machination of government. No matter how big the failure a government program is, it is still a success, because to a statist like Obama, nothing is possible, nothing is real unless it has its underpinnings in government.

To Obama, Government is reality. The government is the source of all that is good and just in the world.  The private sector is what is contrived. To Obama, the private sector is an anomaly; an abomination that must be controlled so as not to infringe upon the government’s influence in people’s lives. The god of Government is a jealous god. Thou shalt not have strange Gods before it.  Even religion itself takes a back seat to Obama’s real religion.

(image credit here)

After all, in order to appease the god of Government and to gain its good graces, one must certainly give alms:

More than half of Obama’s 47 biggest fundraisers, those who collected at least $500,000 for his campaign, have been given administration jobs. Nine more have been appointed to presidential boards and committees.

At least 24 Obama bundlers were given posts as foreign ambassadors, including in Finland, Australia, Portugal and Luxembourg. Among them is Don Beyer, a former Virginia lieutenant governor who serves as ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

….

Obama has appointed 59 ambassadors who were not career Foreign Service officers, and of those, 40 percent were bundlers.

Welcome to the church of Obama.

God help its heretics.

Well, what do you know…….another failed promise!

tiredoflibbs83 Comments

If you will recall, the obAMATEUR promised in 2009 that he would “cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.”

How has he lived up to that promise?

Not only has he broken that promise, but he has crushed it.  For the first three years of the obAMATEUR’s presidency, he increased our deficit by over $1 trillion every year: $1.4 trillion in 2009, $1.3 trillion in 2010 and $1.3 trillion in 2011. The CBO has recently crunched some numbers and it looks like the obAMATEUR is on track to have another banner year of $1 trillion+ deficits.  The CBO predicts that the deficit will rise $1.08 trillion in 2012.

To put all of this into perspective, the largest deficit that our country had ever run before 2008 was $458 billion (and the liberal looters and their obedient drones whined about “saddling our children and grand-children with debt” and obAMATEUR called this “UNPATRIOTIC!”).  Thus, even though obAMATEUR’s deficit for 2012 is projected to be the lowest of his administration, don’t be fooled.  It will be, by far, the largest deficit ever recorded between 1947 and 2008.

What’s the result of this big-government spending?  The CBO estimates that the jobless rate will rise to 8.9% by the end of 2012 and to 9.3% in 2013.

Now the leftist mindless drones will, of course, chime in with “it’s Bush’s fault” and the “he inherited the economy” dumbed down talking points.  But this pResident raised baseline budgeting by almost 25% in his first two years.  This increase had nothing to do with the stimulus, the “venture capitalist” failed spending or his other schemes like “cash for clunkers”, etc. etc. The baseline spending increases had nothing to do with Bush or the “economy he inherited”.  He is a tax and spend liberal! – plain and simple.  Now before you drones get your panties in a wad about the tax part of the previous statement.  This pResident has increased taxes on every income group in this country (alcohol and tobacco taxes, taxes to finance his health-care plan, etc. etc.).  Plus, the CBO says taxes are going to go up as a result of this pResident’s policies.  And he is a “spend-thrift” liberal, he has outspent and accumulated more debt than all Presidents from Washington thru Clinton COMBINED.

By his own words, the obAMATEUR is the most UNPATRIOTIC pResident in history!!!