The Hidden Cost of the Federal Tax Code
Obama White House is starting to push for a VAT tax
For those of you who don’t know what a VAT tax is, it’s a tax on everything paid by everyone.
Given the massive debts our Dear Leader and the democrat congress have run up since taking control of the government, and their plans to keep spending, they need a way to fleece even more money from the American people. The VAT tax they are talking up is certainly one way to do it, as long as you don’t care about the negative effects on the economy. Since actually working to improve the economy clearly isn’t anywhere on the agenda for the Obama administration or Congressional democrats, keep your eye out for a federal VAT tax.
Quote of the Day
You can count on a few things in this world. The swallows will return to Capistrano. Salmon will spawn. Canada’s geese will fly south for the winter. And tax cuts will create growth.
— Investor’s Business Daily
A rap video for economists
“Fear the Boom and Bust” a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem.
Obama puts a stop to the popular off shore drilling option
Barbara Hollingsworth reports in the DC Examiner:
The Obama administration’s six-month delay in approving new offshore drilling leases in federal waters will become a new three-year ban, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar quietly told reporters last Friday. Which means that no new oil and gas leases will be approved during President Obama’s term even though two –thirds of the American public supports such activity, according to a December 2009 Rasmussen poll.
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“Secretary Salazar has finally confirmed what had long been feared – that the Obama Administration has no intention of opening up new areas for offshore drilling during his four-years in office,” said Rep. Doc Hastings, the ranking Republican on the House Natural Resources Committee.So for the next three years and probably more, trillions of dollars in domestic energy assets will remain untouched while billions of dollars more are spent on foreign oil.
Clearly, as in the Health Care “debate”, our Dear Leader has absolutely no interest in what the American People, whom he was elected to represent, care about in a vitally important subject. The President’s ban on domestic energy sources also tells us that he has no interest in halting rising energy costs or taking any steps toward improving the economy. Opening up these resources will immediately create many “shovel ready” good paying jobs, providing a short term benefit to the economy as well as long term benefits. Why is our Dear Leader opposed to actually improving the US economy?
Is Obama going Nuclear?
Filed under: economy, energy, Environment, Nuclear Power, Our Dear Leader, Politics
It seems that our Dear Leader may actually keep one of his promises. According to Townhall.com:
The Obama administration’s planned loan guarantee to build the first nuclear power plant in the U.S in almost three decades is part of a broad shift in energy strategy to lessen dependence on foreign oil and reduce the use of other fossil fuels blamed for global warming.
President Barack Obama called for “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants” in his Jan. 27 State of the Union speech and followed that by proposing to triple loan guarantees for new nuclear plants. He wants to use nuclear power and other alternative sources of energy in his effort to shift energy policy.
Obama in the coming week will announce the loan guarantee to build the nuclear power plant, an administration official said Friday. The two new Southern Co. reactors to be built in Burke, Ga., are part of a White House energy plan that administration officials hope will draw Republican support.
Yup, safe, clean nuclear energy. Plentiful electrical energy completely free of greenhouse gases.
Also good for the economy, as Dr. Pournelle stated:
I have to say it again: cheap energy will cause a boom. The only cheap energy I know of is nuclear. Three Hundred Billion bucks in nuclear power will do wonders for the economy. We build 100 1000 MegaWatt nuclear power plants — they will cost no more than 2 billion each and my guess is that the average cost will be closer to 1 billion each (that is the first one costs about 20 billion and the 100th costs about 800 million). The rest of the money goes to prizes and X projects to convert electricity into mobility.
Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore also thinks it is the ecologically sound thing to do.
I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Stewart Brand, founder of the “Whole Earth Catalog,” says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group’s board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.
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Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools — the machete — has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.
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the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually — the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.
Deficit grows $90 billion a month under democrat rule
Daniel Foster points out the democrats spendthrift ways:
That means that over twelve years of Republican rule, there was an average annual budget deficit of about $104 billion. Compare that with an average annual deficit since 2008 of $1.074 trillion — or about $90 billion per month.
For those of you with bad math skills, let me sum this up for you.
Every month, the democrats come within 90% of increasing the deficit of what it took the Republicans an entire year to do.
Republican and fiscal conservative voters removed the Republican party from power because that party was spending too much money, putting a burden on the economy and not holding back government growth.
Independent fiscal conservatives, including many who are registered as democrats, are not going to reward the democrat party with their votes in 2010 for behavior that is much, much worse than what the Republican party did.
At risk Democrats seeking to extend the GW Bush tax cuts
This bit of news must be like a capitalist stake through Obama’s socialist heart.
The so called “leadership” of congressional democrats and our Dear Leader would much rather see across the board tax hikes place on the American People by letting the G.W. Bush era tax cuts expire.
If Barack Hussein Obama is at all interested in keeping his promise of “no new taxes” for anyone making less than $250,000 a year, he has no choice but to call for an extension of the President George W. Bush tax cuts.
Detroit, the result of decades of liberal policies
Steven Crowder, of PJTV, takes a look at Detroit, a city run into ruins by liberal democrat policies.
Not the change you were looking for
Filed under: Culture of Corruption, economy, Our Dear Leader, Politics
As I have pointed out before, our Dear Leader‘s “jobs created or saved” numbers are smoke and mirrors at best.
So how is the Obama White House going to deal with the case of fraud they tried to foist on the American people? Well, based on past behavior, openness and transparency wasn’t anywhere on their list.
Brett Blackledge, of the AP, explains how Team Lightbringer is going to hide their incompetence now.
The White House has abandoned its controversial method of counting jobs under President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus, making it impossible to track the number of jobs saved or created with the $787 billion in recovery money.
Despite mounting a vigorous defense of its earlier count of more than 640,000 jobs credited to the stimulus, even after numerous errors were identified, the Obama administration now is making it easier to give the stimulus credit for hiring. It’s no longer about counting a job as saved or created; now it’s a matter of counting jobs funded by the stimulus.
That means that any stimulus money used to cover payroll will be included in the jobs credited to the program, including pay raises for existing employees and pay for people who never were in jeopardy of losing their positions.
That’s right. The “open and transparent” Obama administration is now going to take credit for “saving or creating” jobs that already exist.
What is clear, is that Obama’s team of Socialists are trying desperately to hide obvious fact that the democrat “porkulus” bill was an utter and complete failure at the stated goal of “stimulating” the economy. It has been a job killer, not a job creator, and the Team Lightbringer and their co-conspirators in the democrat congressional “leadership” are now trying to make it impossible to accurately track the effect of their pork laden payouts have on the job market, and the economy.