Louisiana is now Taxing Pretty Much Everything

As of April 1, appropriately, Louisiana now has the highest sales tax in the nation.  We now pay five-cents on the dollar in state sales tax. Add that to your parish and city taxes and in some places you're paying 10.5% in tax on your purchase.

Buried in the twenty-five pages of revisions to the sales tax statutes you will find an astounding array of new and increased taxes.

In addition to the penny added to the state sales tax, getting the most press are the usual sin taxes: alcohol and cigarettes. The tax on cigarettes went up twenty-two cents for a new total of $1.08 tax per pack.  Taxes on beer, wine, and liquor are also up.

Our legislators have found ways to tax just about everything this time around though, and reading through the twenty-five pages of revisions is enlightening.  For example, we are now taxing Mardi Gras beads at five-percent; the purchases by krewes for those Mardi Gras throws had been previously exempt but no more.

We are also now taxing athletic events at schools now.  The old statute:

(b)(i) The sale of admissions to places of amusement, to athletic entertainment other than that of schools, colleges, and universities, and recreational events, and the furnishing, for dues, fees, or other consideration of the privilege of access to clubs or the privilege of having access to or the use of amusement, entertainment, athletic, or recreational facilities; but the term "sales of services" shall not include membership fees or dues of nonprofit, civic organizations, including by way of illustration and not of limitation the Young Men's Christian Association, the Catholic Youth Organization, and the Young Women's Christian Association.

But that statute is now revised to include taxes on admission charges to athletic events of schools, colleges, and universities (see page nine). That tax will start out at 5% and run until June 30, 2016 and then will drop to 3% for the next two years, and supposedly will expire in July 2018.  This is a terrible thing for public schools who quite often barely support their athletic programs at all. We all know that schools are always involved in one fund-raiser after another to support these programs. Car washes, candy sales, gift-wrap fundraisers, cookie dough fundraisers...it goes on and on.

Where will the extra manpower come from in collecting and accounting for these taxes at the school level?  The ripple effect of this one is disheartening.

Also now taxable at a rate of 5% are your membership fees and dues to civic organizations like the American Legion, YMCA, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Daughters of the American Revolution, local historical societies, etc.  That one is going to hit me on several fronts.

There's a new 5% tax on admission to art museums and science museums.

That non-profit camp you were going to this summer?  Now taxed at five-percent -- unless you go in July and then it's 3%.

Eyeglasses, prosthetic devices, contact lenses, and wheelchairs will be taxed at 5% as will your purchase of a dialysis machine.

Ticket sales by non-profits?  Five-percent.  So, that American Legion Style Show fundraiser?  You'll be paying taxes on that ticket.

Do you shop at the thrift shop at Barksdale or other military installation?  There's a new 5% tax on your purchase.

And you've got to wonder what they're thinking here: "Sales by blind persons who operate certain small businesses."  Five-percent.

Tickets to dance, drama or performing arts performance sponsored by domestic nonprofit organizations: Five percent.

And if you purchase a of one-of-a-kind work of art from an established location within a cultural products district, there's now a 5% tax.

But hey, it's not all bad. If you own a racehorse in a claiming race, you don't have to pay tax!

And you don't have to pay taxes on your food stamp purchases.

And you don't have to pay tax on your crawfish bait.

Most of these taxes decrease in July back down to 3% and the finally expire again in two years, but it is safe to say that Louisiana lawmakers have figured out how to tax just about everything.

Not only that, but because of the new tax on internet sales, Amazon Associates has ended its program in Louisiana. Those links to books or merchandise that used to be in my sidebar and at the end of some posts? Gone with the wind. I no longer earn revenue from those.

The debate on how we got to this situation is another story - there is plenty of blame to go around and it's certain that Bobby Jindal's shell game bookkeeping didn't help us, but neither political party is without blame.  One would hope however that Governor Edwards would consider top level pay cuts or suspension of his own pay, perhaps, rather than the salary increases he doled out upon his election. Instead we are putting the burden on the backs of those that can least afford it.

Crisis in Louisiana

Here's a snip of my latest post at DaTechGuy blog: 

 When news broke this past Thursday that John Bel Edwards had halted all payments to the enormously popular college scholarship program, you could feel the panic and desperation throughout the state.  

 Thursday afternoon, February 11, word came down about the program via NOLA:  

Gov. John Bel Edwards' budget chief, Jay Dardenne, said the state will have to leave TOPS approximately $28 million short of what it would take to fully fund the program through the end of the semester. He said all public universities will be informed that they would not receive all their TOPS payment this spring. 

Dardenne added that TOPS could only be fully funded this year if the Legislature agreed to raise taxes a lot -- over a half a billion dollars -- in the next couple of months. Even then, the Edwards administration would likely prioritize filling a shortfall in the Medicaid program before the college scholarship program would receive the money it needs.

The TOPS program began in 1989 and, in brief, it pays college tuition to in-state universities for Louisiana students who score a certain percentage on the ACT and who maintain a certain GPA. The intent was to keep our kids here in the state. Through the years the requirements have been tweaked with the GPA requirement now at 2.5 and the ACT score now at 20. You can read more specifics here.  

Now, there are a couple of things to look at in those two paragraphs from NOLA: first, Dardenne said basically that those students already enrolled in the spring semester are on the hook for the balance of the tuition they had been told would be paid through their scholarship. Literally what he said was that the colleges would “absorb” the cost of the unpaid balance. Recall that higher education throughout the state has already been decimated by Bobby Jindal and there is no room to “absorb” anything.  

Students across the state went to bed Thursday night anticipating bills for the balances to hit their mailboxes any moment. 

The second thing to note from that NOLA quote is that Dardenne indicated that even if the money to fund TOPS was found, it would instead go toward funding Medicaid rather than satisfying the promised TOPS debt.

Go to DaTechGuy to read the whole thing.

Everywhere I've been over the past few days you can hear worried, subdued conversations about the tax increases and the proposed cuts. Edwards has the entire state under emotional blackmail.

And now we have the race card. Can we just stop already with the racial division?

The Special Session has begun and it is already contentious.  Whatever lawmakers ultimately decide to do, you can be certain that you'll be paying higher taxes on everything, and new taxes on things you don't pay taxes on now, and that the TOPS program will be decimated with cuts up to 80%.

Dark days ahead.

Added:  

It gets worse.

And worse. The deficit has grown an additional $17 million.

Get Ready For Taxamageddon

I heard a caller on a local radio talk show today say "For the life of me I can't understand why anybody would vote to re-elect Barack Obama!"

I've spent the better part of three years trying to figure out why anybody would vote for him in the first place and I've yet to find a liberal who voted for him that could coherently explain to me why they did.  All I get is mushy-feel-good tripe.

All the news around here is depressing today.  The first thing out of the gate this morning I got word that my insurance will be going up between $50 and $60 a month and the co-pay will be increasing as well.  I guess we all saw that one coming.  The closing line of the memo was a reminder that my paycheck will be less than it was last school year.

I love my job.  I really do.  I love teaching.  But this year we'll begin implementing the Common Core State Standards and a new teacher evaluation system which makes is more than extremely difficult to be scored "highly qualified" and now we'll be getting less money for it.  More pressure, less money.  

It's a condition I guess we all better get used to.  Have you read Grover Norquist's piece in American Spectator today?  It's all about "Taxamageddon" and I wouldn't advise reading it with sharp objects nearby. 

Basically, on January 1, 2013 when the tax cuts lapse, some $500 billion will be added to the nation's tax burden.  That doesn't include the ObamaCare taxes that will begin to kick in:

Of the 20 new taxes or tax hikes in Obamacare, four will take effect January 1, including a 3.8 percent surtax on investment income (on top of existing capital gains and dividend taxes) and a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, such as wheelchairs, pacemakers, and children’s braces.

After outlining a series of tax hikes vile enough to make one want to jump off a cliff (but do it before the death tax goes up!), Norquist closes with this:

Election Day sits only 56 days from a $500 billion tax hike, and the only way to stop it is to re-elect a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, add at least four Republicans to the Senate, and install Mitt Romney in the White House. Then, through reconciliation, the House and Senate can extend the lapsing tax cuts for one year, enough time to pass a real revenue-neutral, Reagan-style tax reform, like the one outlined by Rep. Paul Ryan, which drops the personal and corporate income tax rates to 25 percent. 

A vote for Obama is a vote for an immediate $500 billion tax hike and the long term continuation of Obama’s downward path toward the fate of Europe.

Which brings me back to the original question.  Why would anybody in their right mind vote for this guy?

Here is a liberal's take on Taxamageddon:

The fact is, once one rips the scales from one's eyes (the scales inserted by the likes of Grover Norquist) one realizes the expiry of the Bush tax cuts especially will lead to a new era of growth. Whatever minor immediate dip in GDP occurs, will be more than corrected for by higher productivity, more jobs and more investments....in labor, not just speculative capital. 

Said liberal babbles on about "al-Qaeda phantoms" and "useless wars" before concluding that the Laffer curve is nonsense and so is a vote for Romney.

The Heritage Foundation has a page dedicated to determining how Taxamageddon will affect you and says:

Taxmageddon falls primarily on middle- and low-income Americans. That’s because, contrary to the President’s rhetoric about “the wealthiest Americans,” 60 percent of the Bush tax cuts went to middle- and low-income taxpayers. The expiration of the patch on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will cause these taxpayers to pay a tax that was never supposed to hit them, and the expiration of the payroll tax cut is a tax hike almost exclusively on middle- and low-income families.

It's all quite depressing.

Read Norquist's piece if you dare.

And vote Romney.

(Graphic via Heritage Foundation)

Stephen King's Juvenile, Profanity Laced Op Ed Misses the Point

Stephen King has stepped off the rails and is now an economist.  In a juvenile, profanity laden, editorial for The Daily Beast, King demands that the rich, himself included, be compelled to pay more taxes.  Mr. King spends as much time insulting Chris Christie in the piece (fat jokes are pretty juvenile if you ask me) as he does advocating higher taxes for the rich.

Blasting Mitt Romney for refusing to apologize for being rich, King writes:

 I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Governor Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That’s called stepping up and not whining about it. That’s called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn’t cost their beloved rich folks any money.

King, and other liberals like him, fail to ever recognize or acknowledge that what we have is a spending problem.  Let's address that little problem before we start hammering the top ten percent for more dough.  


Revisit this article from the Wall Street Journal a year ago which points out that the top one percent pay 38% of the taxes in this country.  Nearly half of the American population pay no income taxes whatsoever.  You want to talk about paying your "fair share"?  What's "fair" about that?


King points out that the uber-wealthy voluntarily donate millions each year (himself included) but fails to address the issue of Apple shaving billions off their tax bill by taking advantage of legal loopholes and funneling their dough overseas.  Their tax bill is about 9.8%.  Not bad.  Paying their "fair share," are they, Mr. King?  


In truth, if the rich were taxed at 100% they wouldn't be able to cover the grand entitlements expansion that Obama has saddled us and the next generation with, and that is, as the Wall Street Journal points out, BEFORE Obamacare kicks. in. 


It seems to me that King's (and others like him) criticism is misguided. Instead of taxing the rich even more we should expand the tax base - create more tax payers. Get more people paying into the system. Creating jobs would create more tax payers. 


 One of the biggest problems with the Obama administration is that it kills jobs. Do we need a list? Start with the Keystone pipeline. Energy crushing EPA regulations have shut down coal fired power plants and cost jobs. The Gulf moratorium cost countless jobs and not just in the drilling sector but on land too in all those businesses that cater to and support the drilling industry. Need I go on? 


 It doesn't take a rocket scientist (oh and we killed those jobs too at NASA) to figure out that businesses aren't hiring because of the crushing Obamacare mandates coming down the pike. If you keep an employee at part-time you won't have to pay for his hip replacement later. 


 When did it become a crime to be rich in America, anyway? Instead of falling into Obama's class warfare rhetoric,  Mr. King should stick to his writing career. Then he can make more money and pay more taxes. 


 (Graphic from Heritage) 


 (H/T: Memeorandum)

Rep. John Fleming: "Class Warfare Never Created a Job..."

All these liberal lefties hyper-ventilating about Congressman Fleming's checkbook need to breathe into a paper bag for a few minutes and listen to the rest of his quote. 

Over at Think Progress, the quote is:

Fleming responded by saying that while his businesses made $6.3 million last year, after you “pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay equipment, and food,” his profits “a mere fraction of that” — “by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over.”

You see that period at the end of their quote?  It's not actually there if you listen to what he said.

What he actually said was:

"Yeah, that's before you pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay equipment and food.  The actual net income of that was only a mere fraction of that amount....I would say that since my net income, and again, that's the individual rate that I told you about,  the amount that I have to re-invest in my business, and feed my family is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million, and so by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over to invest in new locations, upgrade my locations, buy more equipment, all of that."

He points out, "Class warfare has never created a job and that's people that will not get jobs...".

So after Fleming takes care of his family (house note, insurance, taxes, bills, car notes, etc.) he has $400,000 to re-invest in his business. 

That's $400,000 to re-invest in new jobs by theoretically upgrading his locations, as he says, or buying new locations, hiring more people, upgrading equipment, paying health care costs that are soon to increase...well, $400,000 won't go terribly far.  

And he's right. Obama's decision to raise taxes on the millionaires is a job killer.

I think Fleming's comments illustrate that perfectly.

Unless you're a liberal who interprets his remarks to mean that he walks around with $400,000 in his pocket and lights his cigars with $100 dollar bills.

(H/T:  Memeorandum)

Damn

Damn.  My paycheck this month was $40 lighter thanks to the new tax codes.  Damn Obamacare and the tax and spend Democrats.

Time to tighten the belt I guess.  No more spending on anything non-essential. 

Beer is essential.

Thursday Sift

A couple of quick links; I'm off to work early this morning.

Susan Estrich has a column about Elizabeth Edwards. 

George Will is loving Mike Pence and looking at 2012.

Peter Ferrara had a good piece yesterday on Obamanomics.

Karl Rove writes on the "Democratic Revolution" with regard to Obama's compromise on the Bush tax cuts.  In the end, he says,

If he fails, taxes will go up for every American on Jan. 1. If that happens, the new Congress would likely rectify the situation within days after being sworn in. The political damage to Mr. Obama would not be undone nearly as quickly. Failure to pass the tax compromise would make the president appear impotent. Confidence among Democrats would collapse. And there would be more challenges to Mr. Obama's leadership from within his own party, perhaps even in the 2012 primaries.  Most importantly, failure would imperil $400 billion in tax cuts that would be a more effective economic boost than Mr. Obama's justifiably ridiculed stimulus. Without much healthier economic growth and far more robust job creation, Mr. Obama has little chance of wooing back the independents who elected him in 2008 yet abandoned Democrats in 2010.

The Senate takes up the DREAM Act this morning.  

I'm off to work.  We kill Caesar today.  Act 3, Sc. 1.

Because the START Treaty is So Much More Important Than The Economy...

If nothing made clear the differences between conservatives and liberals before, Juan Williams surely did on Fox this morning.

Consider this article from Karl Rove in the WSJ this morning regarding the extension of the Bush tax cuts which says (emphasis mine):

If that happens, every worker will receive a smaller paycheck in the New Year. This will happen regardless of what action the new Congress takes—because the Treasury Department must very soon send employers and payroll processers instructions for 2011 tax withholding. If no bill passes in the next 10 days, the Treasury Department will have to assume the Bush tax cuts expire and order more withheld from everyone's pay.  The impact would be dramatic. H&R Block's Tax Institute, for example, has estimated that a married couple earning $80,000 will receive $221.48 less in each bimonthly paycheck starting in January, just when Christmas bills show up.

And Juan Williams tried to argue that Americans are more interested in the START treaty and the DREAM act.  Seriously?  

Senate Republicans have sent a letter to Harry Reid saying basically, we aren't doing ANYTHING until we do taxes.

You tell me.  What do YOU want Congress to deal with first in this lame duck session?  Tax cuts?  START?  Amnesty? 

Tsunami Alert

I have been reading Peter Ferrara's Broadside publication, Obama's Tax Piracy, and it's a real shocker.  I linked to his American Spectator article a couple of weeks ago which gives you a preview of what's in his Broadside.  (These "Broadside" publications are akin to Thomas Paine's Common Sense pamphlets: each is about 40 to 50 pages, small, portable, easy to read.  Ferrara's is No. 17 in the series.)

Ferrera outlines some 13 tax increases coming your way, to include the rise of the top two income tax rates, rise in the capital gains tax, new tax on investment income, increased Medicare HI payroll tax, return of the death tax, tax increase on banks, on oil, gas and coal producers, tax on "Cadillac" health plans, potentially a cap and trade tax and potentially a VAT, just to name a few.

Obamacare brings about a whole new "tsunami" of tax increases all its own.

All of this added to the fact that our corporate tax rate in the United States is rising to about 40% where the European nations we so want to emulate have figured out you've got to reduce that rate to stimulate growth.  The EU slashed their rate from 38% to about the 24% it is today, It's 15% in Germany, 18% in Canada and 12% in Ireland.  If you were a corporation, where would YOU want to do business?

The Democrats, for their part, have no plans to lower the corporate tax rate, by the way.

The Democrats have no plans to repeal Obamacare and it's massive entitlement expansion and multiple tax increases, either.

Most Americans have no idea what's coming at them in January when this wave begins to hit.

The Republicans have a plan.

Is A Double-Dip Recession In Our Cards?

In yesterday's American Spectator, Peter Ferrera posted a shocking summation of Obama's upcoming tax increases "for every major federal tax."  His article is also intended to publicize his new publication, part of a series of publications, as part of Encounter's Broadside series.  I found both points to be of interest.

First the tax increases:  basically because of Congress's failure to extend the Bush tax cuts and because of Obamacare, every major federal tax is about to skyrocket.  This will inevitably lead to a double dip recession.  Among the increases you can expect:

Among the bonehead increases that beckon to shove the economy back into recession is a nearly 20% increase in the top two income tax rates, counting the phase-out of deductions and exemptions. The top capital gains tax rate is scheduled to soar by nearly 60%, counting the application of Obamacare's new 3.8% tax on investment income. The tax rate on dividends is scheduled to nearly triple, from 15% to 43.4%, counting the new Obamacare tax as well. The Obamacare legislation also increased the Medicare HI payroll tax rate by 62% for the nation's employers and investors. On our current course, the death tax will rise from the grave next year with a 55% top rate.

So much for that promise we heard so often that taxes will not increase on the middle class.  Lies!

The bottom income tax rate of 10% will soar by 50% to 15%, and every other income tax rate will rise by a similar amount. The child tax credit will be slashed by 50% from $1,000 per child to $500 per child. The marriage penalty will also rise from the grave to tax more heavily those who are married rather than those who are just living together.  A family of four earning $50,000 per year will pay more than $2,100 in higher taxes. A single mom earning $36,000 per year will pay over $1,100 more in taxes.  Married senior citizens earning $40,000 per year will pay more than $1,400 in higher taxes.

There's a lot more at the link; you need to read it for yourself.   But the news is not good.  Businesses are not reinvesting profits, they're hanging on to dividend income, banks aren't lending capital as they should....the uncertainty of what lies ahead has everything all knotted up and nothing is moving forward - except taxes.


Ferrera is, in this article, also promoting his new publication with Encounter's Broadside series which I hadn't heard about before, so I was interested in that as well.  There are fifteen or so of these little pamphlets modeled sort of on Thomas Paine's Common Sense; each addresses a specific topic such as national security, Obamacare, Immigration, etc.  You can review the list here.  I ordered four of them.  They're short, inexpensive, and written by respected experts on each subject.


One final bit of information from Ferrera's piece:  the Democrats are often screaming about how the rich don't need the tax cuts extended because they need to pay more to help cover this huge deficit.  Ferrera points out "that the top 1% of income earners pay more federal income taxes than the bottom 95%!"  Seriously.  Going Galt, anyone?


Maybe it's time, after all, to examine the Fair Tax.

Tax Calculator

The Foundry has a nifty calculator where you can input a little basic info and get an estimate of your 2010 tax bill.  You'll get three results:  1) If the Bush tax cuts expire, 2) if they're extended and 3) an estimate under the plan where some tax cuts are kept and some are not.

It takes about five seconds to do.

If the Bush tax cuts expire, based on what I made last year, I'll be paying $600 more this year.  I'm not a high-income person by any means.  I'm a school teacher.  One income.  One teenager. 

This year my filing status will be different; Steve and I will be filing jointly this year.  We'll be paying about $500 more if the tax cuts expire. 

Under both scenarios, we'll come out better under option number three - if some are kept and some expire.  Of course, it's just an estimate, but it gives you an idea.

Curious about your own?  Here's the link.

(H/T:  Memeorandum)

Is a Double Dip Recession on the Way?

Arthur Laffer's column at the WSJ sent me spiraling into a funk of depression this morning, but that's no excuse to ignore what he's saying.  You think times are tough now?  It's going to get worse:

On or about Jan. 1, 2011, federal, state and local tax rates are scheduled to rise quite sharply. President George W. Bush's tax cuts expire on that date, meaning that the highest federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero. Lots and lots of other changes will also occur as a result of the sunset provision in the Bush tax cuts.

Tax rates have been and will be raised on income earned from off-shore investments. Payroll taxes are already scheduled to rise in 2013 and the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) will be digging deeper and deeper into middle-income taxpayers. And there's always the celebrated tax increase on Cadillac health care plans. State and local tax rates are also going up in 2011 as they did in 2010. Tax rate increases next year are everywhere. 

Heh - remember that no taxes pledge on middle income America?  Yeah.

So all your taxes from every direction are going up.  But wait!  That's not the worst of it.

Because corporations know all this, they're shifting a lot of growth to 2010 which as Laffer says, is why the economy looks as good as it does right now.  Sadly, it doesn't really look all that good right now, but that's beside the point.  The point is that it's going to look lots worse next year.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan—with bipartisan support—began the first phase in a series of tax cuts passed under the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA), whereby the bulk of the tax cuts didn't take effect until Jan. 1, 1983. Reagan's delayed tax cuts were the mirror image of President Barack Obama's delayed tax rate increases. For 1981 and 1982 people deferred so much economic activity that real GDP was basically flat (i.e., no growth), and the unemployment rate rose to well over 10%.

But at the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 1983 the economy took off like a rocket, with average real growth reaching 7.5% in 1983 and 5.5% in 1984. It has always amazed me how tax cuts don't work until they take effect. Mr. Obama's experience with deferred tax rate increases will be the reverse. The economy will collapse in 2011.

Stacy McCain has some related thoughts on this here as he ponders the ever more frequent use of the term "double dip recession."    He can add Laffer to his list of pundits predicting that:

When we pass the tax boundary of Jan. 1, 2011, my best guess is that the train goes off the tracks and we get our worst nightmare of a severe "double dip" recession.

So should you put your money in your mattress?  Buy gold?  Move to a hut in the wilderness and live off the land?  Cross your fingers and pray?

Laffer has a few suggestions but what I'm going to do is get as much as I can paid off this year and save every penny I can.  Every freakin' dime. 

Agnostic on Taxes?

It's true that most of Obama's promises have expiration dates, which Jim Geraghty points out, and as Ed Morrissey says, "this one's a doozy." (That's also the last line in Vonnegut's "Harrison Bergeron" which seems ironically appropriate.)

During the campaign Obama promised multiple times not to raise taxes on the middle class, specifically, on anyone making less than $250,000 per year: "NO family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase, not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

That went under pretty quick as soon as Obama raised taxes on cigarettes to fund the CHIP program.

But now he seems ready to abandon all pretense of keeping this promise, saying in an interview with Business Week that he is "agnostic" about pulling higher taxes from those making less than $250,000:

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”

While the broken promise is one thing, I find his use of the word "agnostic" in this context sort of strange. It's kind of reminiscent of when he said the Senate was on the "precipice" of passing health care reform. It's just a weird word choice.

The word "agnostic" comes from the Greek ágnōst(os) or ágnōtos which means "not known." So is Obama saying he doesn't know if he'll choose to raise taxes?

As an adjective, "agnostic" is defined as "asserting the uncertainty of all claims to knowledge." Well.....okay. He has no knowledge if he'll raise taxes? When will he know? What will help formulate his decision? Is he just using this word to try to sound smart? Couldn't he just say, "I'm open minded to raising taxes..."? Or is that not what he meant, because maybe he does know.

Really? His best answer is "I don't know"?

We are so screwed.

(More at Memeorandum)

What Economic Recovery?

Depressed.

I just filed my taxes.

My business isn't very complicated; one W-2...it's all pretty simple. And I use Turbo Tax; hey, if it's good enough for Little Timmy Geithner, it's good enough for me.

Except this year I'm only getting back just less than one-third than I did last year. At the end of my calculations and entering of figures, Mr. Turbo Tax says, "Congratulations! Because of the Federal Government's Economic Recovery Act, you kept more money in your pocket this year instead of relying on Uncle Sam!"

Gag me.

I didn't feel any windfall in my take home pay this year. Seriously.

Maybe enough for a Starbucks Grande Latte once a month.

"Economic Recovery" my foot.

Depressed.

(Graphic: www.thestockmasters.com)

Obama Goes After Tax Cheats...Sort of.

I find it highly ironic that Obama is going to sign a directive today "cracking down on tax cheats getting federal contracts." There doesn't seem to be any reference to tax cheats getting nominated for Cabinet positions, or high-ranking government jobs, but you've got to draw the line somewhere, I guess.

Jason Miller for Federal News Radio also reports:

The President will also instruct the Internal Revenue Service to review the "overall accuracy of companies' claims about tax delinquency to be sure that when a company says it's paying taxes, it's not lying," the White House said in a statement released ahead of the President's daily schedule.

That's rich. Can't have any one "lying" about anything, now, can we?

I'm all for cleaning up the process of federal contracts, but maybe we ought to look in our own house as well, Mr. Obama?

Oh, the irony.

Where Will We Be in A Year?

Update: Welcome Instapundit readers!

I took the advice of Bride of Rove and Mary Katharine Ham and spent the afternoon reading Charles Krauthammer's essay on the decline of America. It took me a while because it's long (9 pages printed out) and I wanted to really absorb and understand what he said. It's a fascinating piece and should be required reading.

Since the CBO report on Baucus-care came out, and since it's becoming more and more clear that Obamacare will be paid for by the middle class and seniors, it's becoming more and more clear that we are in real trouble. Add that to what Krauthammer says about the state of America now, and in the near future, and one has to wonder where, exactly, we will be, say, one year from now. Should Obama's foreign and domestic policies continue unchecked, and should this health care reform issue pass as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi plan to write it, there will be plenty of Americans seriously hurting.

Consider first the fact that some kind of health care reform is going to pass. Some form of it. Every possible plan on the table involves a tax increase. There will be tax increases on insurance providers to pay for all of it which will be passed on to the consumer. There will be tax increases on the wealthy, too. There will be fines for non-compliance.

Well, okay. Say you are fine with that - you don't mind paying a little more so that others can have the same coverage you do. But consider that there are also other huge increases on the horizon. Waxman-Markey has already cleared the House. Should it clear the Senate there will be massive hikes in your energy bills. Massive. Huge. Add that to the extra cash you're paying to pay for health coverage for other folks, and well, it adds up.

But wait. Nancy Pelosi wants to talk about a Value Added Tax. That's going to hit the middle class very hard. So add THAT to the health care tax increase, and the Cap 'n Trade increase and you're getting hit on multiple levels.

Meanwhile, we are still forbidden from tapping our own energy sources and rely on imported oil. Despite our own vast offshore reserves and our Arctic reserves, we continue to import. No nuclear plants in the works. Energy costs will continue to rise. We are held hostage to Venezeula and others for our energy.

Then you factor in one thing that Krauthammer mentioned, the devaluation of the dollar, which he points out will lead to hyperinflation. Yet the more our national debt increases, and it's exploding, baby!, the less valuable our dollar becomes. Krauthammer reminds us that more and more voices are calling for the replacement of the dollar as the world currency.

So where will we be one year, or even six months, from now? Two years? The whole point of Krauthammer's peice is that we are headed in a very dangerous direction. I think when you compound the points he makes about Amercian ascendancy and decline, on top of all these inflationary issues and tax increases, we are, in fact, in grave danger. People are going to feel the pinch in that paycheck.

There is no doubt that some form of health care reform will pass; the Democrats don't need Republicans to do that. It will happen. Waxman-Markey is already in the pike. And if Pelosi wants a VAT, she's likely to get it; the Dems have to pay for their massive social agenda and domestic agenda somehow.

Pay close attention, folks. And remember, 2010 is coming.

Hope 'n Change 'n More Taxes

Pay close attention because I think you're about to see this one expire. Technically, it already did; as soon as BHO signed the SCHIP expansion and raised the tobacco tax, this one was a goner.



However, Whizkid Timothy Geithner is now allowing for the possibility that middle class tax increases are coming. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Geither said the administration will "do whatever is necessary" :

To get the economy back on track, will President Barack Obama have to break his pledge not to raise taxes on 95 percent of Americans? In a “This Week” exclusive, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told me, "We’re going to have to do what’s necessary.” Geithner was clear that he believes a key component of economic recovery is deficit reduction. When I gave him several opportunities to rule out a middle class tax hike, he wouldn’t do it. “We have to bring these deficits down very dramatically,” Geithner told me. “And that’s going to require some very hard choices.”

Who didn't see that one coming? The numbers guys have been saying for weeks that you can't do everything BHO wants to do and not raise taxes on everybody. The rich can't foot the bill for all of it.

Hope 'n Change. Right.

Turning into Europe

According to The Foundry and the folks at The Heritage Foundation, with the passage of Obamacare, we're about to outpace Europe in tax rates. "The average top marginal income tax in the U.S. will be above 52%. You know what they’re in France? 45.8%. Germany? 47.47%." Consider their chart:




If this one passes, there's no turning back. Contact your Senators and Representatives.

Can the DMV do Brain Surgery?

Congress is now considering a $1.5 trillion health care plan. How will they pay for it? Via The Foundry, we have a list of proposed tax hikes:

Capping the value of itemized deductions (including charitable donations)
A 3% surtax on households earning over $250,000
A Millionaires tax
A tax on soda
A tax on beer (oh no!)
an increase in payroll taxes
a flat tax on health insurance companies
broaden the Medicare tax on investment income
an employer mandate
a value added tax on everything BUT food, housing and Medicare

These are all being considered, although some more favorably than others. Can our economy seriously handle this?

And what happened to that promise not to raise taxes on any family making less than $250,000 a year? What are we left with on that one? It's already been broken with the tobacco tax, but are we now to assume that families making under $250,000 would not be affected by any of the above, either? What was Cap and Trade if not a huge tax on anyone that uses energy or buys goods?

It's all just words.

As far as health care goes, it's not a right. Our government already has programs in place to take care of those people that need care. Maybe those programs aren't sufficient - I'll give you that. Nobody says the VA is a paragon of excellence. But do we want EVERYONE'S care to be like that? It'll be like getting your tonsils taken out at the DMV.