I was perusing online some of the more popular papers around the country and came across this OP-ED in the LA Times. Made me chuckle because I issued the same challenge to YB&DL a couple post back in response to a comment he made. Eh, well now it seems that the challenge has been issued to the public via Op-ed by a Andrew Klavan. Hence, as bloggers seemingly ONLY Black gay Conservative Republican I give you the following link. Cheers!
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-klavan29-2009mar29,0,5456892.story
~Damnit!
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
What If...
- I never spoke but you knew I was there...
- I always expressed that I actually cared...
- I didn't have a mind of my own and I just followed the crowd...
- I didn't smoke so many blaq~n~milds...
- I always agreed with everything you said n did...
- I continuously made bad decisions like I were a pre-pubescent kid...
- My mother n I didn't argue as much as we do...
- I thought less about me, n so much more about you...
- My happiness was in the hands of others...
- I sometimes didn't feel so GOT DAMN smothered...
- I sat quietly, wondering about what everyone did...
- I never experienced the things I did when I was that short lil kid...
- I knew the decisions I made would transform me into the man I am today...
- All these thoughts where w/held inside for another day...
~Damnit!
- I always expressed that I actually cared...
- I didn't have a mind of my own and I just followed the crowd...
- I didn't smoke so many blaq~n~milds...
- I always agreed with everything you said n did...
- I continuously made bad decisions like I were a pre-pubescent kid...
- My mother n I didn't argue as much as we do...
- I thought less about me, n so much more about you...
- My happiness was in the hands of others...
- I sometimes didn't feel so GOT DAMN smothered...
- I sat quietly, wondering about what everyone did...
- I never experienced the things I did when I was that short lil kid...
- I knew the decisions I made would transform me into the man I am today...
- All these thoughts where w/held inside for another day...
~Damnit!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
The 2% Illusion - Wall Street Journal February 26th, 2009
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal (my favorite paper btw) on the date mentioned above that I found very interesting and I'd like to share with you all. Enjoy!
President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime." AP This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need. But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.Fast forward to this year (and 2010) when the Wall Street meltdown and recession are going to mean far few taxpayers earning more than $500,000. Profits are plunging, businesses are cutting or eliminating dividends, hedge funds are rolling up, and, most of all, capital nationwide is on strike. Raising taxes now will thus yield far less revenue than it would have in 2006. Mr. Obama is of course counting on an economic recovery. And he's also assuming along with the new liberal economic consensus that taxes don't matter to growth or job creation. The truth, though, is that they do. Small- and medium-sized businesses are the nation's primary employers, and lower individual tax rates have induced thousands of them to shift from filing under the corporate tax system to the individual system, often as limited liability companies or Subchapter S corporations. The Tax Foundation calculates that merely restoring the higher, Clinton-era tax rates on the top two brackets would hit 45% to 55% of small-business income, depending on how inclusively "small business" is defined. These owners will find a way to declare less taxable income. The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion. Unwinding the U.S. commitment in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire can't possibly pay for his agenda. Taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise as well. On that point, by the way, it's unclear why Mr. Obama thinks his climate-change scheme won't hit all Americans with higher taxes. Selling the right to emit greenhouse gases amounts to a steep new tax on most types of energy and, therefore, on all Americans who use energy. There's a reason that Charlie Rangel's Ways and Means panel, which writes tax law, is holding hearings this week on cap-and-trade regulation. Mr. Obama is very good at portraying his agenda as nothing more than center-left pragmatism. But pragmatists don't ignore the data. And the reality is that the only way to pay for Mr. Obama's ambitions is to reach ever deeper into the pockets of the American middle class.
THE 2% ILLUSION
President Obama has laid out the most ambitious and expensive domestic agenda since LBJ, and now all he has to do is figure out how to pay for it. On Tuesday, he left the impression that we need merely end "tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans," and he promised that households earning less than $250,000 won't see their taxes increased by "one single dime." AP This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can't possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama's new spending ambitions.Consider the IRS data for 2006, the most recent year that such tax data are available and a good year for the economy and "the wealthiest 2%." Roughly 3.8 million filers had adjusted gross incomes above $200,000 in 2006. (That's about 7% of all returns; the data aren't broken down at the $250,000 point.) These people paid about $522 billion in income taxes, or roughly 62% of all federal individual income receipts. The richest 1% -- about 1.65 million filers making above $388,806 -- paid some $408 billion, or 39.9% of all income tax revenues, while earning about 22% of all reported U.S. income.Note that federal income taxes are already "progressive" with a 35% top marginal rate, and that Mr. Obama is (so far) proposing to raise it only to 39.6%, plus another two percentage points in hidden deduction phase-outs. He'd also raise capital gains and dividend rates, but those both yield far less revenue than the income tax. These combined increases won't come close to raising the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that Mr. Obama is going to need. But let's not stop at a 42% top rate; as a thought experiment, let's go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That's less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable "dime" of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.Fast forward to this year (and 2010) when the Wall Street meltdown and recession are going to mean far few taxpayers earning more than $500,000. Profits are plunging, businesses are cutting or eliminating dividends, hedge funds are rolling up, and, most of all, capital nationwide is on strike. Raising taxes now will thus yield far less revenue than it would have in 2006. Mr. Obama is of course counting on an economic recovery. And he's also assuming along with the new liberal economic consensus that taxes don't matter to growth or job creation. The truth, though, is that they do. Small- and medium-sized businesses are the nation's primary employers, and lower individual tax rates have induced thousands of them to shift from filing under the corporate tax system to the individual system, often as limited liability companies or Subchapter S corporations. The Tax Foundation calculates that merely restoring the higher, Clinton-era tax rates on the top two brackets would hit 45% to 55% of small-business income, depending on how inclusively "small business" is defined. These owners will find a way to declare less taxable income. The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion. Unwinding the U.S. commitment in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire can't possibly pay for his agenda. Taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise as well. On that point, by the way, it's unclear why Mr. Obama thinks his climate-change scheme won't hit all Americans with higher taxes. Selling the right to emit greenhouse gases amounts to a steep new tax on most types of energy and, therefore, on all Americans who use energy. There's a reason that Charlie Rangel's Ways and Means panel, which writes tax law, is holding hearings this week on cap-and-trade regulation. Mr. Obama is very good at portraying his agenda as nothing more than center-left pragmatism. But pragmatists don't ignore the data. And the reality is that the only way to pay for Mr. Obama's ambitions is to reach ever deeper into the pockets of the American middle class.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Ya gotta LOOVVVE the Media...
Now as many of you know I rarely get political on my little space in blog world, however, given the media's coverage I must speak out and for some educate seeing as the national media won't. It is not in my nature to listen to second hand information spun by others be it someone spewing gossip or the national media. I like to hear it from the horses mouth. Hence, I give you this clip of Rush Limbaugh from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
http://www.cspan.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-15919
Much has been made of Rush Limbaugh saying that "I hope the President fails", but many people do not know the context in which the comment was made. I for one agree whole heartedly with the statement and in this clip, Rush explains in great detail (as he's done numerous times including the first day he said it on his radio program of which I have been a faithful DAILY listener for 5 years now) the context in which he made the statement. The clip is rather long but if you have a little time, I implore you ALL to take some time to not only 'listen' to the speech, but to HEAR what it is that he is saying. This is not a time to rely on the drive-by media spin and play snippets of what ANY politician and or citizen says. Take the time to hear it from the source.
God Bless you all!
~Damnit!
http://www.cspan.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-15919
Much has been made of Rush Limbaugh saying that "I hope the President fails", but many people do not know the context in which the comment was made. I for one agree whole heartedly with the statement and in this clip, Rush explains in great detail (as he's done numerous times including the first day he said it on his radio program of which I have been a faithful DAILY listener for 5 years now) the context in which he made the statement. The clip is rather long but if you have a little time, I implore you ALL to take some time to not only 'listen' to the speech, but to HEAR what it is that he is saying. This is not a time to rely on the drive-by media spin and play snippets of what ANY politician and or citizen says. Take the time to hear it from the source.
God Bless you all!
~Damnit!
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