TAX THE RICH! Yeah, Right...

Here is another example of the hypocritical liberal democrats. 

In the day that Charlie (tax-tax-tax) Rangel was charged with breaking House ethic rules and with failure to disclose financial interests, we also find out that senator John (more ketchup, please) Kerry is mooring his 76 foot yacht Isabel in Rhode Island, rather than Massachusetts, where his vacation mansion is.  The reason for this is that Rhode Island has repealed The Boat Sales and Use Tax, thus allowing the first family of ketchup and mustard to save almost half a million dollars.

What Kerry has done is not different from what thousands do around the country.  Multi-million dollars yachts of residents of south Florida register in Bermuda and the Cayman islands avoiding Florida taxes.  Every increase in this type of taxes leads to less revenue and more loopholes for those who can afford creative accountants. 

If I could, I would do the same thing Kerry has done.  Marry a billionaire's widow, and then look for places where to avoid taxes.  In the spare time, be a senator and demand that the "rich" pay their taxes.  By rich the democrats mean a teacher married to a cop in New York city.

By the way, the yacht was designed in Rhode Island, but built in New Zealand.  I wonder why.

Half a million here, half a million there; before you know you are talking serious money.

Let's Tax Dumb Ideas

In 1696, King William III of England imposed a tax on windows.  The rational being that the richer a person, the bigger their house and the more windows it would have.  We can see that the idea behind this revenue enhancement program was to have a "progressive tax."  Of course, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and the result was that houses were built with bricked up windows.  Here is such a building, built before the repeal of the tax in the 19th century:

I was reminded of this tax when I read that Representative Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) has introduced legislation that would charge a penny for every dollar of your money drawn from an ATM machine and other financial transactions.

It does not take a financial genius to realize that a 1% tax would only motivate people to keep money for daily use under the mattress, and create a cash economy, just like command economies led to black market and underground economies.

I think that something more productive would be to impose a tax on dumb ideas emanating from Washington. The national debt would be eliminated in no time, and for the first time Democrats, as providers of such ideas, would be at the forefront of closing the deficit.

My favorite news items of the day...

How refreshing. Newly elected Governor Christie of New Jersey has imposed a spending freeze on the state. The democrats reacted as expected decrying the negative impact the freeze will have on education and mass transportation. The typical cries of "tax the rich" can also be heard by those who have forgotten that the rich have moved out of the state in droves. The refugees from the Garden State can be found in states such as Florida and Texas.

Memo to politicians in Washington and Portugal, Ireland and Greece and Spain (also known as PIGS), emulate New Jersey.

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Rhode Island Congressman Patrick Kennedy has announced that he will not seek reelection next year. This will be the first time in 60 years that a Kennedy will not be in Washington. I for one, will not miss them.

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Meanwhile, in an interview with Bloomberg, Obama has announced that he is an agnostic when it comes to taxing those earning $200,000 and households earning more 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.

Remember “Read my lips, no new taxes”?  It was a promise made by a one term president.

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel has announced that Germany will not rescue Greece.

Despite a show of Franco-German unity on the crisis and the first statement from EU leaders pledging to safeguard the currency's stability, hopes on the markets of a German-led rescue plan to shore up Greece's critical public finances were dashed by Merkel, who repeatedly emphasized that Athens would need to put its own house in order and brushed aside all questions of financial support.

I am sure that in the coming days we will see Greeks overturning and burning cars. A better solution would be to eliminate the unions that have crippled the Greek economy and made Greece one of the less competitive nations in Europe.

And so it goes...

This week Newfoundland's prime minister will have heart surgery in the United States. No comment for those who keep repeating the mantra "We need health care just like Canada."

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In the meantime in the good old United States, politicians who constantly remind us that we just had the "largest tax cuts in history" will continue to so despite the fact that we are about to be hit by devastating taxes. Te result will be a slowdown in the economy, which will lead to more government spending, which will lead to printing money, which will lead to inflation which will lead to high interest which will slow down the economy...

If you want to know the final outcome Google: Argentina; Economic History.

Here are some of the hikes we will be hit with when Obama lets tax cuts expire in 2010:

• The Obama administration is looking to increase taxes for those extravagant rich who earn $250,00 or more. Did you know that in New York City a teacher married to a nurse qualify as rich?
• By December 31 the top tier will rise from 35 to 39 percent.
• The 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent.
• The 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent
• The 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent.
• The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.
• Investors will see taxes on dividends increase from 15 percent to 39.6 percent.

Yahoo Finances also reports that:

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most
notably a "patch" that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.

Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year's levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy -- the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.

Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:

* Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;

* The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;

* The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;

* Individuals who don't itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;

* The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free.

Add all these increases on top of sales taxes, state taxes, local taxes, real estate taxes, telephone taxes, cell phone taxes, gasoline taxes, car and registration fees, hotel taxes, parking taxes, tolls on roads and bridges, taxes on movies, theater and other forms of entertainment, and you are paying more than half of what you earn in taxes.

At what point is enough enough?

Sunday Readings

Israel had to storm the Temple Mount to stop young hoodlums from throwing stones. The typical condemnations and threats have been uttered by the usual suspects. Somehow, I don't think that Biby Netanyahu is afraid.

Read Article

George Will on Michele Bachmann. Must read for conservatives who are looking for alternatives to the RINO's.

Read George Will

For those of us who have long suspected that The Guardian is an anti-Semitic newspaper, we can be suspicious no more. When publishing a list of Nobel peace prize winners, Israelis magically disappeared. No Begin, Rabin or Peres. Arafat was still there. A pity they didn't publish the winners in medicine, physics, chemistry and economics. They would have had to eliminate many of the greatest minds in history. The original list published can be seen here. Because of an international outcry, The Guardian's list has been updated.

Read Article

Would you like to know how much your relatives, friends and neighbors earn? Live in Norway.

Read Article

Hold on to your wallets. The Internet czar is coming.

Why is it that the announcement that Obama intends to appoint an Internet czar has been met with such a deafening silence?

Those who believe that this appointment has anything to do with security are as naive as those who believed that only earners of more than $250,000 will pay higher taxes. The appointment of this czar has very little to do with security and a lot to do with control and revenue.

The federal and local governments have for a long time felt that the Internet was the last untamed frontier, and were looking for ways to regulate and tax it. Here are some scenarios of what I believe is coming:

1. Tax Internet access and make users pay based on the amount of time that they are logged to the net.

2. Tax email. This proposal has been for a long time part of urban legends, but I would not be surprised if such a tax is proposed to help subsidize the Post Office, meaning higher salaries for mailmen and the support for this tax from unions.

3. License and tax blogs. Blogs are a thorn in the side of politicians. An appropriate regulatory system would ensure that only those whom the politicians love would survive. Whatever revenue came from this tax could be used to subsidize dying newspapers, ensuring their perpetual loyalty and editorial support.

4. Tax large retailers and those who shop on line. Of course this would be done for the sole purpose of protecting mom and pop businesses.

5. Introduce a fairness doctrine for material published on line, demanding opposing views.

6. Protect music and movies from the so called piracy. This alone would ensure the eternal gratitude of Hollywood. Independents distributors of movies and music would be eliminated through prohibitive taxation.

7. Tax legal downloads of music and movies.

8. Tax access to newspapers on line.

9. Tax access to radio and TV on line.

These are just but a few of the nightmarish scenarios I envision coming from our new czar, but I trust their bureaucratic imagination to come with many more creative methods to destroy this last bastion of freedom.

For those of you who would argue that the Internet has no boundaries and it would be impossible to regulate other countries; let me remind you that the United Nations has for a long time demanded a voice in running the Internet. And community organizers tend to love the United Nations.

The Arbiter of Fairness

Well, Timothy Geithner is not only a financial genius, but also an expert on global warming and Turbo Tax. Sorry…forget Turbo Tax.

Yesterday the wizard of Wall Street testified before Congress that subsidies in the form of tax breaks to oil and natural gas producers should be abolished because they contribute to global warming. He also voiced the position of the messianic administration, which proposed levying an excise tax on oil and natural gas producers in the Gulf of Mexico that would help raise 5.3 billion dollars between 2011-2019. An additional proposed fee of $4 per acre on leases in the Gulf would generate an additional 1.2 billion dollars over said period of time.

Let us ponder this. We are in the midst of a recession that, according to Obama, might turn into a depression, and now the proposal is to add new taxes? I am not sure how many economics courses Obama took in college, but does he really believe that the oil companies will swallow the tax increases and the additional fees, and deduct it from their dividends? Of course not. Every additional dollar in the cost of exploration will be passed along to the consumer, and each dollar going to the coffers of the state, is a dollar less in the circular flow of currency of the free market.

As I watch members of the cabinet testifying, I came to realize that Obama has surrounded himself with two types of acolytes. Those who are radicals just like him, and this group includes Hilda Solis at Labor, Attorney General Eric Holder, HHS secretary Kathleen Sibelius, Janet Napolitano at Intelligence and Lisa Jackson at EPA. The other group includes characters that probably know better, but are too enthralled of being in this historic administration and have become yes men for Barack Obama. Geithner, who seems sick every time he testifies, heads this group with trade representative Ron Kirk, who is another tax evader, OMB director Peter Orszag, Hilary Clinton at State and Leon Panetta at the CIA. The rest seem to belong to the Tabula Rasa Club.

I remember hearing presidential candidate Obama interviewed by Maria Bartiromo on CNBC. He mentioned raising taxes on the wealthiest American, a group that in New York City would include a policeman married to a teacher. When presented with evidence that tax cuts lead to increase revenues he responded that increasing taxes on the wealthy was “a question of fairness.”

Just like Chris Matthews, I felt a tingling sensation crawling up my leg. In contrast to Matthews, I recognized the feeling. It was the hand of the IRS inside my pockets.

Tax the Rich

I was listening today to Mayor Bloomberg’s weekly interview on WOR and a couple of things he said caught my mind. Let’s remember than Bloomberg knows a little about economics.

First he said what many of us have known for a long time. Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme in existence and by far it dwarfs the Madoff affair.

The next thing he said was that many couples in NYC are both municipal workers. By today definitions they qualify as rich. Two teachers, aged 40, have a combined income of $200,100. This is without taking into consideration fringe benefits, early retirements, sick days, overtime, comp jobs, sabbaticals et cetera. The same applies to police, firemen and sanitation.

Having worked for the city, and knowing many couples who fit the Mayor’s description, I can't help but smile remembering how many times I heard them demand more taxes for the rich.