“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” — Thomas Jefferson

My father was a certified public accountant, as is my older brother. I not only lacked any arithmetical skills, I spent much of my early years ignoring the ups and downs of the economy, thinking that these matters were beyond my comprehension. What I failed to understand was that the economy was as much a creature of meddling politicians as economic theories.

I was born in the midst of the Great Depression and have now lived long enough to be caught in a new one. I know that economists and others say we are in a Recession, but it feels like a Depression to me and to the millions of other Americans who are out of work and being laid off weekly. It feels like one to those who suffered foreclosure on their homes. It feels like one every time we go to the supermarket and gasp in disbelief at the cost of groceries.

The unimaginable debt that Americans have incurred by borrowing far too much as a nation and as individuals with credit cards, and the ease with which one could borrow against home equity, has now forced us to deal with the reality of a financial crisis that began in late 2008 when the housing bubble burst.

Historically, it started far earlier when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, elements of the 1930s New Deal, were created to bring “social justice” to the housing market. By the time of the 2008 implosion, they owned more than half of all mortgages issued in the nation.

While the politicians seek to position themselves to blame the other party, the saving grace is that in 2010 voters returned power in the House to Republicans; doing so by electing a large number of “Tea Party” candidates pledged to reduce the debt and reverse what have been the disastrous policies of the Obama administration.

Despite the breathless reporting of the 24/7 news channels, the parade of politicians on both sides explaining their positions, the real news is that Americans are finally engaged in a real debate over the debt and the nation’s future. In 2012 they will vote to change course and, just as European nations that also borrowed too much, they will have to accept austerity measures.

A lot of government programs and, indeed, whole agencies and departments should be ended.

It’s not the death of socialism in America, but it is the recognition that a government that seizes and redistributes the wealth of working Americans must be reversed, revised, and reduced in size and scope.

Too much taxation, too much regulation, too much borrowing, and too much wasteful spending is what the national debate is all about and it is a long overdue debate.

In the land of the brave and the home of the free, Americans want to be free to decide what kind of light bulbs they can purchase, what kind of cars they can drive, and end all the other restrictions that make doing business in America an expensive, unrealistic nightmare.

In a way, the infatuation with a completely unknown, untested, and inexperienced president has been a wake-up call. Barack Obama was packaged to be a celebrity, a “messiah”, when all he really was, was an ill-prepared, standard issue Marxist. He surrounded himself with economic advisors and unvetted “czars” who shared his belief that one last, big push could “transform” a nation that was more in need of a sensible budget than grandiose and failed socialist solutions.

The result was the appalling Obamacare law that attempted to seize twenty percent of the nation’s economy. The House has voted to repeal it. Twenty-six States have gone to court to have it nullified. A Republican president and Senate in 2012 will end it.

Obama and the “green economy” advocates around him have dumped billions into wind and solar energy companies that could not exist without government subsidies coupled with government mandates for their use. Combined, wind and solar provide less than three percent of the nation’s electricity and will never meet its needs.

The nation’s auto industry, once the envy of the world, is almost entirely controlled by the government that, even in the midst of the debt ceiling debate, was being told it must produce lighter, more dangerous automobiles to meet unrealistic demands that they provide more mileage per gallon. You cannot get more energy from a gallon of gasoline than you can from any other source of energy that is ruled by the laws of physics.

Openly scornful of fossil fuels, the Obama administration has rendered the nation more dependent on foreign oil and waged war on coal and now natural gas.

The Obama moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has wreaked havoc on the oil industry, pursuing the same policies of earlier administrations that have thwarted exploration and extraction of the billions of barrels of U.S. oil that go untapped and unused. Oil rigs have been departing the Gulf to other nations, along with thousands of jobs and millions in the revenue they contributed to the economy. The vast resources of the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge remain off-limits even though only the tiniest part of the refuge would be affected.

We suffered a socialist “stimulus” that stimulated nothing but an increased multi-trillion dollar debt.

I think America has turned an invisible corner and that as soon as we rid the nation of President Obama and his tax-and-spend Democrat supporters in Congress, the nation will begin to correct its borrow-and-borrow-some-more profligate ways. A smaller, less intrusive government may emerge in the years, the decades ahead.

The entrepreneurial energies of Americans will be unleashed if that occurs. The present Recession/Depression will join all the previous ones we have been through. We have all been chastened and we will conclude it wasn’t just Barack Obama’s policies, but decades of socialist policies dating back to the earliest days of the last century.

If that occurs, our children and grandchildren will have the excessive burden of debt lifted from them and American’s energy, innovation, and optimism will prevail.

© Alan Caruba, 2011

 

WesternFront America

The other night on the boob tube I caught a commercial featuring a talk show host named Neal Boortz, Michael Reagan (adopted son of former president, Ronald Reagan) and the vile Newt Gingrich. All pushing for another dangerous taxing scheme that will not cure the cancer, only continue to feed the beast.

Boortz has been on this “fair” tax bandwagon for years. It’s obvious he has zero understanding of the Federal Reserve and why such a taxing scheme would only continue to steal the fruits of our labor to fund massive government spending.

Michael Reagan is also a talk show host who, like Boortz, has zero understanding of our monetary system and its feeding artery: the IRS.

Newt Gingrich sold out this country decades ago with his votes. Besides being a serial adulterer and ethtically bankrupt [1], Newt Gingrich is the global master’s trophy boy. He hopes the Republicans take control of Congress in November because there’s no doubt in my mind, Gingrich is out to be president of these united States of America. We can never let that happen. Do you know Newt was caught on tape saying the ridiculous “Contract with America” was nothing but a PR tool for incoming freshmen members of Congress? Yes, that’s a fact. They were obtained by Roll Call. Old Newt pulled a fast one on faithful conservatives. His votes killed MILLIONS of jobs and sent them south of the border and overseas.

In order to understand why H.R. 25 is just another tool of tyrants, you have to go back and see where and when the problem started. Prior to 1913, we had no federal income tax. There was no unconstitutional “Federal” Reserve Banking system and there was no Seventeenth Amendment. This nation thrived in agriculture, manufacturing and industrial output.

The shadow government that has been controlling Congress for almost a hundred years had the downfall of America well planned. First, an income tax to syphon off the fruits of our labor. Even though the Sixteenth Amendment wasn’t legally ratified and did not give Congress any new power of taxation, we all know what that Gestapo criminal syndicate will do to you if you don’t voluntarily submit (with a gun to your head) to looting your earnings.

In order to strip the States of the Union equal suffrage in the U.S. Congress and turn over that purse to the mobs, the Seventeenth Amendment was declared ratified even though it clearly was not. The states then became dependent upon the whims of maggots like John McCain, Chuckie Schumer, Dick Durbin, Diane Feinstein, Lindsay Graham and all the rest of them..

The big granddaddy came in December of 1913 when Congress passed the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Banking Act.

As long as the FED exists, there can be no economic freedom for we the people.

As long as the FED exists, the Outlaw Congress will continue to borrow more and more worthless fiat currency to fund these grotesque, illegal invasions of foreign countries, fund massive unconsitutional welfare programs like the Department of Health and Human Services, unconstitutional cabinets like the Federal Department of Education and the EPA. The Outlaw Congress will continue to rape we the people to send hundreds of billions of BORROWED “dollars” to the communist UN, the USAID (United States Aid for International Development), BIS (Bank of International Settlements) and the World Bank. That’s the short list.

This so called “fair” tax gets rid of the indentured servitude taxes: Medicare and Social Security as well as some others. But, make no mistake: this is a convoluted route to keep the money flowing into the central bank and will only continue to ignore the real cancers: massive out of control government and a debauched currency.

For decades I have said, along with millions of others: A limited form of republican government means just that and mandatory at the top of the list is to get rid of the income tax, the FED, get us out of Bretton Woods and all the foreign financial entanglements looting the people’s purse. People can still pay their indentured servitude taxes and the Outlaw Congress can pass simple bills to eliminate the obscene death tax as well as others.

In order to fully understand the truth about these fake “solutions” (fair tax, flat tax), you have to do the research. Those taxing schemes are nothing new, but it appears there is big money behind getting that bill passed and we must stop it. If Congress wanted to get rid of the income tax, they could have done it decades ago. The Republicans had control of Congress from January 1995 – December 2006. All they did was continue spending us into unpayable debt. And, yes, the debt is unpayable, and if you think the U.S. won’t default on its debt, you are ignoring the hard, cold facts.

Please take the time to read these excellent analysis on the phony “fair” tax so you fully understand it is just another trap:

There is No Such Thing as a Fair Tax

“So, instead of calling for the elimination of the various federal programs that feed off tax dollars, Boortz wants to merely change the way they are funded….This means that the Fair Tax idea should have been discarded at the very beginning, for instead of saying that it was not fair that the government confiscate 10, 20, 30, or 40 percent of a man’s income, the Fair Tax proponents did not even begin to tackle the root of the problem: the welfare/warfare state that drives the federal leviathan’s insatiable lust for the taxpayer’s money.”

Once Americans began to understand the ludicrous hype in Boortz’ argument, out came another book to “clarify” the lies:

There is Still No Such Thing As a Fair Tax

“Boortz is right. There are some eye-opening new insights unique to this sequel. Like the disclosure that you might “owe more in taxes in the first year of a Fair Tax system than you do today.”[1] Or the admission that “the Fair Tax could be even more progressive than our current system.”[2] Or the confession that the “implementation of the Fair Tax doesn’t mean complete annihilation of the IRS.”[3] Or the proposal that “a procedure should be set up in the Treasury Department to collect taxes on Internet and catalog sales, remitting the state and local governments’ share to them.”[4]

From the “this is how slaves are made” crowd:

Rebuttals to Mises Institute Fair Tax Review

“Once you read his [Vance] entire article you realize his real objection is not with the Fair Tax but with any Federal Taxation at all. His Anarchist approach to no taxation in which he hates all forms of taxation is found at: http://www.mises.org/story/1975

Well, here’s a news flash for the author of that piece: I am not an anarchist nor do I belong to the Libertarian Party. I left the GOP in 1996 and have been registered no party ever since. Yes, there is a requirement for taxation to run a limited form of republican government. The limitations upon Congress and the people’s purse is specific in Art. 1, Sec. 8 of the U.S. Constitution. The author has zero understanding of the intent of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution regarding taxation. If you read the link below, Understanding why no income tax…..scroll down to the section on Vivien Kellems and read it. The author in the piece above (link) apparently seems content to allow the Outlaw Congress to continue sacking and looting the people’s treasury, but as I’ve said so many times: The rooster has come home to croak.

Understanding why no income tax is necessary to fund the federal government (text and also free on audio)

Tax cuts, Fair Tax Schemes Keep People Herded in the Wrong Direction

Here is the text of H.R. 25 and SHAME on Republicans like the nitwit who “represents” me, Randy Neugebauer, Ted Poe, Darrell Issa and others for supporting such a dangerous bill that will only continue to support massive government spending while picking our pockets because we all have to buy things like food:  “The Fair Tax Plan is currently pending in Congress under the name of “The Fair Tax Act of 2005.” It is a consumption tax in the form of a national sales tax of 23 percent on new goods and services. Although it would “not be imposed on used or previously owned items,” it would apply to all new goods and services: medical procedures, haircuts, new cars, new homes, gasoline, food, medicine, Internet purchases, and electricity.”

It is now the Fair Tax Act of 2009. 145 pages of mumbo jumbo cowpatties. I read all of it.

Now, Neal, Reagan and Newton, you want to slap a 23% mandatory tax on the food we eat. Just what the Founding Fathers had in mind! Americans can’t afford health care services as it is and those caring boys with their very healthy incomes want to slap a 23% tax on a family struggling to make ends meet or seniors living on a fixed income who need medicine. America: Soundly reject this lunacy. A return to a limited form of constitutional government is the only real solution.

Boortz, Reagan and Gingrich are pumping this bill big time. Please call your Congress critter or get to a town hall meeting tell them to vote NO on H.R. 25. It is not the solution.

Learn the truth:

November 16, 2009: Demand Congress stop withholding taxes now
February 1, 2010. Congress refuses to bring home millions of jobs
March 10, 2010: Finally: Bill To Get The U.S. Out Of NAFTA
August 2, 2010: Fed up with Band Aids
Proof the Seventeenth Amendment was never ratified

Newt Gingrich: Enemy of America

[1] On January 21, 1997, for the first time in the House of Representatives 208 history, Newton was disciplined as Speaker and paid a $300,000 fine. The vote to reprimand him was 395-28.
Who is the real Newt Gingrich?
Gingrich supported the ILLEGAL Mexican peso bail out
In fact, he put it into motion
Newt Gingrich: The Establishment’s Conservative

Devvy Kidd authored the booklets, Why A Bankrupt America and Blind Loyalty; 2 million copies distributed. Devvy appears on radio shows all over the country. She left the Republican Party in 1996 and has been an independent voter ever since. Devvy is a constitutionalist who believes in the supreme law of the land, not some political party.

 

WesternFront America

It was with the best of intentions that the colonists rebelled against a master that taxed them mercilessly. During the initial days of freedom much debate was had over the right of the “government” to tax its subjects. More importantly was the idea that each citizen could indeed own their property. The Fifth Amendment clearly stated, “nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The founding fathers understood that private property and the ownership of this was the foundation of both prosperity and freedom. However, it was President Lincoln and congress in July of 1862 that formed the Commissioner of Internal Revenue and enacted the “income tax” to pay for his war. This commission was the precursor to the current Internal Revenue Service. In 1907 the initial phases of a federal property tax was initiated. And with these actions the freedoms that had long been held began to disappear, for now the Federal government with all of its representative might could summarily relieve an individual property owner of their property for not paying the “protection” taxation money demanded. No longer could an individual own their home and property, for now thanks to an overreaching federal government one would always pay for being a property owner.

In February of 2009 a modern organization of people from all walks of life came together to protest the federal governments spending of trillions of tax dollars for the sole purpose of enabling major corporate interests to stay in business. Instead of allowing these business’s to fail and contribute to true capitalism by opening up areas for new growth the federal government used our tax dollars to keep them afloat. Over the following months these same business’s began laying off hard working Americans, the same Americans who had paid the tax dollars that kept them in business and began shipping more and more of their available jobs to foreign interests. Millions of Americans lost their entire lives and began losing their homes at an alarming rate, while your government used more of your money to advertise lies such as, “the economy is improving,” countless millions of hardworking Americans went bankrupt or worse. Foreclosure rates skyrocketed and in many cases back taxes went unpaid, leading to more seizures of individual property by an out of control government.

In the recent months this same Tax Day movement has become something it never was meant to be, however, for many of those (including myself) who rallied behind the original reasons for its existence the message was made clear. Our government has become a bloated corporate messenger of lies. Daniel Webster stated, “An unlimited right to tax, implies a right to destroy.” In his argument in McCulloch v. Maryland – February 22, 1819. The founding fathers originally won this nation from overlords who were using taxation as a means of control; our modern federal government has lost its way as well.

I leave you with this last quote from a mind greater than mine, Alexander Hamilton stated the following, “The genius of liberty reprobates everything arbitrary or discretionary in taxation.” The Continentalist, no. 6. N.Y. Packet – July 4, 1782  In this simple quote he condemned the idea that taxes should be made mandatory or threats be used to retain taxes. The modern IRS is nothing more than a protection racket, they threaten to take (and do in many cases) your property if you fail to pay them.

When you vote in August remember that those who have already been in office have done nothing to prevent this, in fact they have for the most part done everything to promote increased taxes. John McCain, JD Hayworth, Jonathon Paton and more have all done their part to contribute to your loss of income and the government (be it state or federal) ability to further control your freedom! Vote for fresh faces, and do not contribute to our loss of freedoms further by voting in the very problems we are trying to be done with!

This article is one in a series titled (What would the founding fathers do) which can be seen at Cochise County Libertarian Examiner

Originally posted at Examiner.com © Jesse Mathewson

 

WesternFront America

Both my Father and older brother were Certified Public Accountants. Around the dinner table, the Internal Revenue Services was spoken of as the adversary. “Tax time” which used to mean a March 15 deadline was preceded by a period of long working hours. Over the years the tax laws became so arcane and dense they defy comprehension.

The income tax is probably the worst thing that ever happened to the United States in the last century because it was always punitive and regressive. It punishes saving. It deters economic growth through investment. It takes the wage earner’s money before he or she receives their paycheck.

There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come and you can read all about it in Ken Hoagland’s “The Fair Tax Solution: Financial Justice for All Americans” ($19.95, Sentinel, Penguin Group USA). With notes and index, this book is a mere 151 pages and is small enough to fit into anyone’s pocket or purse. You will learn more about taxation in America from this little book than from several volumes of tax code.

Let me put the Fair Tax is perspective. In early March, The Washington Post reported that “President Obama’s proposed budget would add more than $9.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, congressional budget analysts said Friday.” As most people know by now, you can never trust any estimate of costs that the government puts forth unless you multiply it by a factor of two or three.

The U.S. is facing a financial Armageddon.

The projected deficit of $1.5 trillion “would force the Treasury to continue borrowing at prodigious rates, sending the national debt soaring to 90 percent of the economy by 2020.” Someone wants America to collapse and someone is doing everything in his power to ensure that happens.

Real limits on how much the government can borrow must be imposed. Limits on how much it can spend are needed. The claim that taxes only “soak the rich” is false because income tax laws are now destroying the middle class while most of the officially “poor” pay no taxes at all.

Hoagland is the Communications Director of Americans for Fair Taxation, the sponsoring organization for Fair Tax legislation. What he does not know about taxation is not worth knowing and what he does know he imparts with breathtaking simplicity and directness.

“Today we tax the very thing our economy needs to grow—income and that which produces income. We take money from savings, from returns on investment, and from what we are paid for our labor.”

The Fair Tax, which would replace only federal taxation, is based on what we individually consume. It is paid at the point of sale and it does not take earnings from one’s paycheck, nor punish you for having a savings account or for capital gains as the result of investing wisely. A Fair Tax says your money is your money.

The current tax system actually punishes corporations for being headquartered here. The U.S. levies the second highest (after Japan) corporate tax in the world. The result makes doing business in American far less competitive than in other nations. It forces corporations to collectively spend billions on compliance.

“According to the Tax Foundation, small businesses spend an astounding $724 in compliance costs for every $100 they pay in income tax.” Most people have to hire people to prepare their tax returns for them because of their complexity.

Enacted in 1912, over “almost one hundred years of congressional amendments, court decisions, and taxpayer/IRS disputes (the tax code) has swelled to more than 2.1 million words” and in fiscal year 2006 it was 16,845 pages.

When an earlier version of the income tax was proposed, it was repealed in 1872 and a later 1894 version was rejected by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional in 1895 because the income tax violated the Constitution’s prohibition against direct taxation (article 1, section 9). It took a Constitutional amendment, the sixteenth, ratified February 12, 1913, to permit it.

After that, Congress had an enormous source of revenue with which to swell the federal government.

“The cost of compliance, the hours and money spent on preparing tax forms, totaled close to $300 billion in 2008,” writes Hoagland. “That’s twice as much as the total of all the taxpayer stimulus checks mailed out in 2008.”

The result of the income tax has been “destructive, as politicians from both parties have taken us down a path of unsustainable spending.”

Despite what you will be told, the Fair Tax will collect the same amount of revenue as the income tax, but it will spread the burden more equitably and transparently.

It would literally eliminate any need for the Internal Revenue Service because it is a tax of 23% of what consumers spend “instead of an average of 30% of all the money they earn.”

No more gigantic, impenetrable tax code.

No more prying into the private transactions and earnings of citizens.

No more deductions for withholding and payroll taxes from your paycheck before you are paid.

No more punishment for saving or investing.

No more incentives for corporations to artificially keep salaries low or to move out of the nation to avoid harsh taxation.

Your earnings are your earnings. They do not belong to the federal or state government. With a Fair Tax, the more you earn, the more you keep, depending on how much you decide to spend.

That’s why it is called a Fair Tax and that is why the time has come to enact it.

Alan Caruba writes a daily post at http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com. An author, business and science writer, he is the founder of The National Anxiety Center

© Alan Caruba, 2010

 

WesternFront America

So let me get this straight. Barack Obama wants to tax fifty banks, each with more than fifty billion dollars in assets, in order to make up for a shortfall in the 700 billion dollar bailout (Troubled Asset Relief Program . . . aka: TARP) authorized by George Bush? This, despite the fact that the majority of banks which received an infusion of TARP funds have already paid back the money, with interest?

Wow, he’s a financial genius.

The fact of the matter, if anyone cares to look into this and acknowledge the truth, is that the vast majority of the 117 billion dollar shortfall that Obama claims he wants to recover for “The American People,” is not owed by the banks.

General Motors and Chrysler LLC owe 66 billion dollars of the total, and they are not subject to the tax (even though they are losing money hand over fist, and will need more taxpayer infusions to survive). The insurance conglomerate, AIG, owes about 70 billion of it. They would have to pay the tax, but Obama conveniently neglected to mention them in announcing his plan.

There was a reason for that. He has decided to make banks the boogeymen.

This move by Obama was nothing but grandstanding. He has FINALLY realized (or rather, his media people have realized) that Americans think he has been a miserable failure in terms of economic issues. He also knows that most people see Wall Street banks as evil entities, and hopes to gain empathy from voters by attacking the large financial institutions. Normally he wouldn’t care about the voters, save for the fact that the anger at his administration is growing so large that it appears Democrats are going to get slaughtered in the Nov. 2010 elections.

No, friends and neighbors, Obama’s bank tax is simply a gift to Democratic politicians up for election in 2010. Furthermore, consider this:

How will a tax on 50 huge banks help you, the ordinary Joe or Jane trying to make ends meet? The money collected will not go to you in any way. It will not reduce your tax burden, ease the credit crunch, or lead to the creation of jobs. In fact, it will do just the opposite. As large banks are taxed, they will pass the cost onto clients of all sizes. If the client in question is another, smaller, financial institution, this causes several problems. Faced with higher costs, the smaller institutions will close ranks and tighten belts, making credit even more difficult to obtain. If the client in question is a manufacturer or other business (anything with employees) the increased costs will lead to less expansion, a hiring freeze, and possible lay-offs.

Gee, thanks Obama. I know we’re all supposed to be stupid enough to praise you for “soaking the rich,” but such moves do not practically help the average American one iota. You’re trying to look like the savior of “the little guy” when in fact you are screwing him blind.

Just more proof that our current president gives not a damn about anything but his warped ideology. I hope those deluded souls who applaud taxing the big banks – some of which never took TARP money, some of which were forced to take it, and almost all of which have paid back every dime – can keep the grin on their face when they are forced into foreclosure.

 

WesternFront America