More Burdens for Overtaxed Marylanders

With Maryland's latest enactment forcing small businesses to provide sick leave to the entitled crowd its effects will be far reaching. A new squad of government goons will soon be knocking on the doors of businesses, small and large, with a list of sanctions, if they are out of compliance. In Maryland sick leave means the entitled will head to the closest casino with your tax dollars and or the money businesses are forced to pay them for not showing up. Small business will be especially hurt by this overreaching law. My suggestion to them keep your employee count below 15, if you can. Marylander's are extremely overtaxed. Governor Hogan vetoed this legislation but the entitlement crowd's lobby is too strong here. Kudos to our Governor for doing the right thing. Mark Davis MD

Americans and business being driven away by taxes and regulations

Commentary by James Shott

It is frequently said and generally true, especially well into the 1900s, that America is a land of immigrants, due to the huge numbers of people that have flocked to the United States since the early 1600s when the Pilgrims began the process, crossing the ocean in a long and perilous journey seeking religious freedom. A major wave of immigrants arrived here during the colonial era, during which the United States of America was born, and another wave occurred from 1880 to 1920, as thousands arrived seeking greater economic opportunity.

While these periods saw immigrants voluntarily traveling to America, thousands of African slaves reached our shores, brought here against their will from the 17^th century well into the 19^th century.

Four hundred years after the Pilgrims sought freedom of religion, America is still a favored destination for people from many other nations, and many or most of them come from highly troubled circumstances in their home countries and seek a better life, and as we have seen more recently, many sneak across the borders, and some come here to cause trouble and pain.

Curiously today, we also find thousands of Americans voluntarily giving up their U.S. citizenship for that of other countries. This is a trend that has seen surprising growth over the last several years.

Looking back to 1998, 398 Americans gave up their citizenship, and through 2009 the number of American expats ranged from a low of 231 in 2008 to a high of 762 in 2005, which was the end of a slow but steady seven-year increase in expatriate activity, according to data from the U.S. Treasury Department. After that, the numbers bounced around below the 2005 high, but then in 2010 that number nearly doubled, with 1,534 Americans giving up citizenship. This was the start of a period of increasing numbers of expatriates for every year except one, until it peaked last year at 5,411.

Interestingly, more than one-third of those expats in 2016 took this step in the last quarter of the year when the presidential campaign ended and the election was held. This raises the question of whether so many did so in the last three months of the year because they feared Hillary Clinton would win the election, or whether they decided to split after Donald Trump defeated her to become president?

During the run-up to the election a long list of recognizable names threatened to leave the country if Trump won, including one Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. It is worth noting that Ginsberg and many, or perhaps all, of the others threatening to leave are still here.

As these personalities were advertising what turned out to be their idle threats, countries like Canada and New Zealand advertised themselves as desirable destinations for Americans ready to abandon ship. As it turns out, New Zealand is the third most popular destination for American expatriates after Malta and Costa Rica, and followed by Mexico.

Why are people who are citizens of perhaps the most sought-after destination for people leaving other countries willing to give up U.S. citizenship to live somewhere else?

There are several reasons, such as that some of them fell in love with the culture and history of another country while on a trip abroad, and decided to move there. Or perhaps some may be immigrants who came here, became citizens, and want to return to their native land.

But another reason explains expatriation: The escalation of offshore penalties over the last 20 years is likely contributing to the increased incidence of expatriation, in the judgment of the tax attorneys who track expatriate data on their International Tax Blog. And US News adds that “The U.S. is one of a very small number of countries that tax based on nationality, not residency, leaving Americans living abroad to face double taxation.”

The U.S. tax code once again rears its ugly head. Its irrational design not only encourages businesses to move to other countries, but encourages individuals with earnings in other countries to abandon their citizenship, as well. However, President Donald Trump has pledged to overhaul the tax code, reducing tax rates on businesses and individuals, among other changes, and that may make a difference for these people.

Inside the tunnel where the Left lives, peering out on the world with their narrow view of things, everyone that makes a lot of money and every large company is an evil thing that threatens survival, so tax breaks that help the wealthy and the rich corporations are a bad thing.

But moving past the liberals’ tunnel vision, removing tax provisions and regulations that punish businesses and creating an environment that invites businesses, will encourage those that left to return and will help domestic businesses to expand and produce the jobs the country so badly needs.

Lowering personal tax rates and raising the standard deduction will leave more hard-earned income in the hands of regular people, who will then spend and/or invest it, both of which help the economy grow. And doing away with taxing foreign income will remove a factor encouraging people and their money to seek greener pastures elsewhere.

Cross-posted from Observations

What’s more important, a minimum wage hike, or fixing the economy?

Commentary by James Shott

An analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan arm of Congress, shows that both sides in the debate over whether to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $9.00, $10.10, or even $15 an hour have relevant points to make.

Advocates believe that the wage hike would lift nearly a million people out of poverty, increase productivity, reduce turnover and give those receiving the raise more money to spend, and that would translate to businesses recording higher sales, and an overall improvement in economic activity.

A $10.10 minimum wage, the CBO says, means 900,000 fewer people in poverty, and job losses will comprise only 0.3 percent of jobs affected by the wage hike.

The hike would boost wages for most low-wage workers, as about 16.5 million workers who make less than $10.10 an hour would see higher earnings once the higher minimum is fully implemented, which Democrats in the House and Senate have been calling for. And then, those making slightly more than the new minimum wage may feel they need a raise too, and employers would be virtually compelled to give them one in what the CBO calls a "ripple effect."

Let’s review: Advocates believe we should raise the minimum wage because the more low-wage workers make, the more they'll have to spend, and the better that will be for businesses selling products and services. People move out of poverty and spend more and consequently businesses prosper from greater sales. Our economic problems magically dissolve. Does it get any better than this?

Unfortunately for the advocates, good decision-making requires looking at all the factors, not just the ones that support a particular position.

Opponents point out that higher wages lead to higher prices, and lost jobs, and wages need to be related to the work involved and its value to the company, not artificially determined by Washington bureaucrats.

An essential factor that needs to be considered is what happens inside businesses when their labor costs increase? They must make adjustments in other expense areas, increase productivity or increase prices to maintain profitability and stay in business.

The other side of the CBO job loss estimate is that while only 0.3 percent of minimum wage workers will lose their jobs with the proposed wage hike to $10.10 an hour, and that sounds like a small effect, the number of actual people comprising that 0.3 percent is 500,000. So 900,000 will be lifted out of poverty, but more than half that number will lose their jobs. Thus, the picture painted by the CBO is somewhat less rosy than the advocates believe.

A study for the National Center for Policy Analysis by Richard B. McKenzie, explains that there are other forms of compensation to consider, nonmonetary benefits that may be as much as 30 percent over and above wages of all workers, a substantial percentage of the total compensation employees receive. Faced with higher labor costs, employers may make adjustments to these nonmonetary benefits to balance things. These benefits include relaxed work demands, workplace atmosphere, schedule flexibility, job security, and hours of work. Employers may also have to cut jobs, curb summer hiring, opt not to replace workers who leave; lower their profitability and/or raise prices to customers.

Despite what you may hear, read or think, most employers want the best employees they can get; the most productive, best trained, and most devoted workers they can find. They are willing to pay them to keep competitors from luring them away, however, there are financial limits to what businesses can pay without making other changes.

They may reduce jobs or cut worker hours, increase demands on existing employees and impose a stricter work atmosphere to increase productivity, replace workers with machines, or look for cheaper materials from overseas where labor costs are lower, affecting American suppliers.

The US economy is suffering, as evidenced by, among other indicators, the labor force participation rate, which shows that only 63.2 percent of Americans age 16 or older are participating in the labor force, the rate having fallen over the last several years to 1977 levels.

We need an atmosphere that encourages businesses to create jobs, not artificially raise the wages of the least skilled, least experienced people in the labor force, particularly when doing so will cost 500,000 jobs, and further depress the participation rate.

Among the many stunning failures of the Obama administration is its proclivity to pander to small constituencies to gain political support, all the while ignoring the broader problems facing the nation.

When an administration chooses to implement narrowly focused policies conceived for political gain, you get what the Obama administration has produced: an almost non-existent recovery from the recent recession, millions of Americans who can’t find a job, millions more who are too discouraged to keep looking and have dropped out of the labor force, and still millions more Americans on food stamps and other forms of welfare.

The Obama administration and Congressional Democrats have shown conclusively that the serious problems of the nation are far less important to them than winning the next election.

Cross-posted from Observations

Reidin’, Rightin’, and ‘Rithmetic

Commentary by James Shott

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) gave a speech on the Senate floor last week where he said this about the disastrous implementation of the Affordable Care Act: "Despite all that good news, there’s plenty of horror stories being told. All of them are untrue."

This abjectly stupid remark ignores the problems millions of the people Harry Reid serves as Majority Leader have encountered at the hands of this Democrat-created nightmare, some of them with life-threatening consequences.

Some say he really was alluding to claims made in ads paid for by the Koch brothers, about which he specifically commented shortly after that major gaffe, claiming the Kochs are trying to “buy America” through Americans for Prosperity, a 501(c)(4) started by David Koch and Richard Fink.

He believes that the Koch brothers are the single greatest threat to liberty, “spending hundreds of millions of dollars telling Americans that Obamacare is bad for them.”

However, Koch Industries donated less than $3 million in the 2012 election cycle, earning 77th place on the Top Donor List of OpenSecrets.org. Americans for Prosperity is reported to have spent $40 million, but does not appear on the Top Donor List.

Top Donor organizations ahead of Koch Industries include: the National Education Association, #5 at $14.7 million; the United Auto Workers, #8 at $13.3 million; the American Federation of State/County/Municipal Employees, #10 at $11.4 million; the AFL-CIO, #14 at $9 million; and the Service Employees International Union, #18 at $6.6 million. Ten more labor unions beat Koch Industries in spending. Organized labor is “buying America” to a much larger extent than Koch Industries and Americans for Prosperity combined.

Harry Reid misleads us on political spending, and lied to us during the 2012 campaign about Mitt Romney having paid no taxes for 10 years. He epitomizes the sordid aspects of partisan politics, and simply cannot be believed.

*****

On May 5, 2010 Latino students at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California turned out to celebrate their Mexican heritage on Cinco de Mayo.

When some American students showed up at school wearing American-flag shirts, school officials ordered the American students to turn their shirts inside-out or go home, to avoid a repeat of the unrest that had occurred during past observances of this date.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld the action of school officials.

So, when students from Mexico attending American schools want to flaunt their Mexican-ness in the face of the American students by waving Mexican flags on a Mexican holiday, and some American students decide to show their patriotism by wearing American flag shirts, the school authorities believe that the American students are wrong, and the Mexican students are right, and a federal court agrees with them.

Disgusting!

Whacky, radical rulings like this one have earned the Court the nickname, “The 9th Circus.” The Mexican students should not be allowed to stir up sentiments by waving a foreign flag around to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. If they prefer Mexico to the U.S., perhaps they should just go back.


*****

Congressman Dave Camp (R-Mich.), Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has produced a tax reform plan based upon three years of hearings and discussions with bi-partisan groups.

Hardly anyone who pays taxes will argue against reforming this overly complex system. The last round was in 1986, and at that time the tax code was more than 26,000 pages. Thirty years later, the tax system is a incoherent mess that negatively affects prosperity, job creation and investment, and is regulated by a tax code that has nearly tripled in size to roughly 75,000 pages.

Each year the tax code gets further complicated with more special interest loopholes, credits, and carve-outs.

Rep. Camp would make several changes to the code, like eliminating loopholes, reducing tax rates, whittling down the current seven tax brackets to three, and lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent, the highest in the industrialized world, to 25 percent.

In those 75,000 pages are goodies for numerous interests, and they will scream bloody murder if their special goody is on the chopping block. The Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore notes that we can “expect the White House to lambast this plan as a ‘tax cut for the rich,’ but the evidence from history shows that lower tax rates are usually associated with higher overall tax receipts and more taxes paid by the rich. In the 1980s after two rounds of Reagan tax rate reductions, income tax receipts doubled, and the share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent, 5 percent, and 10 percent rose as the economy expanded.”

This plan simplifies the tax code by allowing millions of tax filers a larger standard deduction, meaning they don’t need to itemize and can use the EZ form. For those who do itemize, the mortgage and charity deductions remain.

While the Camp plan isn’t perfect, and produced quite a few knee-jerk criticisms, it has many advantages, and is certainly a good start toward finally transforming the current tax code into something that is sensible and easy to understand. Let’s hope Congress has the courage to follow through.

Cross-posted from Observations

Obama and taxing the rich, and another deadly school shooting

Commentary by James H. Shott

Running for reelection in 2012, President Barack Obama claimed, “The rich are not paying their fair share of income taxes.” Playing to the baser instincts of voters is a tried and true technique, and if Mr. Obama does nothing else very well, he is a master at dividing people from one another and creating class discord.

However, so much of what the president says just ain’t so, as we have seen so dramatically and with such terrible consequences with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Mr. Obama’s signature legislative initiative. He is so closely related to this fiasco and has invested so much political capital in it that the ACA is now routinely called by his name.

However, Mr. Obama’s effort to tar and feather the rich as being stingy taxpayers falls on its face in a new study released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The CBO study “The Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, 2010” shows that the top 40 percent of households, as determined by pre-tax income, paid 106.2 percent of the nation’s income tax in 2010.

How can any group of Americans, or even all Americans together, pay more than all of the income taxes received? Read on.

The study also showed that the lowest 40 percent of households paid “negative income tax,” meaning that they paid no federal income tax, but instead received on average $18,950 in government transfer payments. Within this group the CBO said that the lowest fifth of income earners paid an individual income tax rate of minus 9.2 percent, and the second lowest group paid minus 2.3 percent.

Presumably, Mr. Obama would like the “rich” to pay not just “all of the income taxes,” and not just “more than all the income taxes,” but still more than that.

The study shows that the redistribution of wealth that Mr. Obama and his progressive cronies so strongly favor is well underway. But, of course, it still isn’t enough, and won’t be enough until everyone shares equally in the misery, because in their quest for the unachievable goal of financial equality, the progressives will have made it impossible for hard working Americans to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and will dampen the enthusiasm for earning, causing a collapse of the system.

In other news, as the nation observed the passage of one year since the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings that resulted in the death of 20 children and six adults, another school was in the news over an incident involving another young person determined to hurt innocent people.

Upset with the debate team sponsor and librarian at Arapahoe High School in a Denver, Colorado suburb who had disciplined him recently, the high school senior wearing a backpack with three Molotov cocktails inside it, a bandolier and carrying a pump-action shotgun entered the school and headed for the library.

The librarian got a warning and left the building. In this rampage the shooter fired five shots, two randomly down hallways that hit no one, and one more random shot that claimed no victims, but two other shots that each injured one student, one of them critically. He also set off one of the Molotov cocktails in the library that fortunately injured no one. And then he killed himself.

The rampage might have resulted in many more casualties had it not been for the quick response of a deputy sheriff who was working as a school resource officer, Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson told CNN. He praised the deputy’s response as “a critical element to the shooter’s decision” to kill himself, and lauded his response to hearing gunshots. “He went to the thunder,” he said. “He heard the noise of gunshot and, when many would run away from it, he ran toward it to make other people safe.”

A student who had a class with the alleged shooter told The Denver Post that, "He had very strong beliefs about gun laws and stuff." The classmate added that she had heard that he was bullied a lot.

The alleged shooter described himself on Facebook as "Keynesian,” one advocating government monetary and fiscal programs, and also attacked Republicans: "You republicans are so cute," he wrote, and posted an image that read: "The Republican Party: Health Care: Let 'em Die, Climate Change: Let 'em Die, Gun Violence: Let 'em Die, Women's Rights: Let 'em Die, More War: Let 'em Die. Is this really the side you want to be on?"

Two other students told The Post, “He had political views that were ‘outside the mainstream.’”

We must not ignore the message from Sheriff Robinson that he clearly believes the presence of an armed and trained individual at Arapahoe High School, and the shooter’s knowledge of that person’s presence had a positive influence on this situation.

Making schools and other public buildings “gun-free zones” means no opposing force will be there when a criminal carrying a weapon shows up.

As we have seen at Sandy Hook and other places, this is a prescription for carnage and pain, whereas at Arapahoe High School, the county sheriff thinks the presence of an armed resource person prevented even more death, pain and suffering.

Cross-posted from Observations

Another Example of How Our Miseducation System is Failing Our Kids

Stolen From Stop The ACLU

This goes under the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot category.

Remember how you were taught in school how to add a series of numbers? Remember how you were told to write each set of numbers on top of each other, to stack them so you could then add them together to get a total?

Kids aren’t taught that any more. In fact, the system of “cubes, sheets, sticks and dots” they are taught now is so convoluted, involved and confusing that it often results in wrong answers. But correct answers isn’t the goal for today’s fetid school systems. “The process” is all that is cared about.
If you aren’t infuriated by this video…


Click here if the video fails to load.

These are unionized teachers perpetrating this crime on our kids, folks.

Remember that.

I don't know about you, but after the first 30 seconds I wanted to find the teacher and punch him or her out.  And we are suppose to train these children to be the engineers, doctors and scientists of the future.  Really?

National Prayer Breakfast speaker attracts attention and criticism

By James H. Shott

The National Prayer Breakfast is held each year in Washington, D.C., on the first Thursday of February, and is attended by some 3,500 guests. The event is hosted by members of the United States Congress, and this year was co-chaired by Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL). It is organized by The Fellowship Foundation, a conservative Christian organization and is designed to be a forum for the political, social, and business elite to assemble and build relationships.

Among the speakers this year was President Barack Obama, who told the audience, “We are united in the knowledge of a redeeming savior whose grace is sufficient.” However, he said that even though America’s leaders come together in prayer over national policy and the right direction to lead the country, such talk is often forgotten after the event. “I’d go back to the Oval Office and turn on the cable news networks – and it’s like we didn’t pray!” he said.

Dr. Benjamin Carson, director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, delivered the keynote message, which has drawn criticism from the left as being inappropriately political in a decidedly non-political setting.

However, Dr. Carson's comments were fundamentally about empowering the individual rather than the government, and were non-partisan and delivered respectfully. In fact, he claims political independence, being neither a Republican nor a Democrat. "If there were a party called the Logic Party, I would be a member of that," he told Fox News on Sunday.

That said, Dr. Carson is not the first to inject political messages at the Prayer Breakfast. President Obama himself did so last year, discussing public policy issues such as barring health insurance companies from rejecting people with pre-existing conditions and reducing tax breaks for the wealthy, and tying them in with popular Bible verses. “[S]o when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street … or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy strong for everybody,” Mr. Obama said on Feb. 2, 2012.

Benjamin Carson's story is one that inspires us all. He grew up in poverty in urban Detroit, but his home was one built on values typical of the 1950s, raised by a single mother with only a third-grade education who worked long hours to support her family, but who understood American values of hard work and determination. He overcame dire poverty, poor grades, a horrible temper, and low self-esteem, all of which worked against his dream of becoming a physician someday. But his mother would not allow him to give up and challenged her two sons to strive for excellence and stressed the importance of education. His mother refused to become a victim, and did not accept excuses for failure.

Today Dr. Carson is a devout Christian, a full professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and he has directed pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center for over a quarter of a century. His brother is an aeronautical and mechanical engineer. "I became the brain surgeon and he became the rocket scientist," he said.

He told radio host Armstrong Williams last Friday that his comments were “directed at the situation that is going on in our nation and how we can solve it. ... It’s not an attack on anybody, but it’s saying there are logical solutions for our problems and there are things that we can all get behind — be we right wing, be we left wing."

His condemned political correctness, which he described as dangerous because it interferes with freedom of thought and expression. Americans must stop fearing over-sensitive reactions when they express their thoughts and speak their minds freely, he said, but at the same time respect those with whom they disagree.

“We’ve reached a point where people are actually afraid to talk about what they want to say, because somebody might be offended,” he said, citing the example of people refraining from saying “Merry Christmas.” “We’ve got to get over this sensitivity; it keeps people from saying what they really believe.”

Comparing what is happening in America to history, he said: "I think particularly about ancient Rome. Very powerful — nobody could even challenge them militarily … they destroyed themselves from within,” he said. “Moral decay. Fiscal irresponsibility.”

And he offered suggestions for taxation and health care that require far less government involvement than current systems. Citing religious tithing, he suggested a flat tax where everyone pays the same rate, with no loopholes. And he suggested replacing the Affordable Care Act with health savings accounts opened at birth that could be passed on to surviving family members and could receive contributions other than from the owner of the plan to assist the financially disadvantaged.

These are sensible ideas, but they will not gain the support of the control freaks that run our government because they disenfranchise the special interests that Dr. Carson referred to as the fourth branch of government.

Cross-posted from Observations

Poetic Justice: Shocked Obama Supporters Discover Their Taxes Went Up

By Findalis
Monkey in the Middle

Stolen From Wake Up America (With Permission)

One difference between those that voted for Obama and those that did not, is that those that did not vote for Obama are not surprised in the least that in the fiscal cliff deal, taxes went up, not only for the so-called rich, but for 77 percent of all American workers.

Via Bloomberg:

The budget deal passed by the U.S. Senate today would raise taxes on 77.1 percent of U.S. households, mostly because of the expiration of a payroll tax cut, according to preliminary estimates from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.

More than 80 percent of households with incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 would pay higher taxes. Among the households facing higher taxes, the average increase would be $1,635, the policy center said. A 2 percent payroll tax cut, enacted during the economic slowdown, is being allowed to expire as of yesterday. 

One percent of households, or those with incomes over $506,210, would pay an average of $73,633 more in taxes.

80 percent of households making between $50,000 and $200,000 will pay an additional average of $1,635 in taxes withheld from their paychecks.

Also, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington, the tax burden will increase more for someone making $30,000 a year (1.7 percent) than it does for someone earning $500,000 annually (1.3 percent).

Conservatives making  $50,000 and $200,000, that are now seeing smaller paychecks, are suffering as much as liberals making equal amounts, but the conservatives are definitely not surprised. On the other hand, Obama supporters, are expressing anger, shock and outrage over Washington's fingers snatching more money from their paychecks.

Obama supporters believed the statement below, conservatives did not.

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, 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.”---- ” Barack Obama, September 2008. “

 Joseph Curl over at Washington Times visited one of the most liberal websites on the Internet and reports on some of the shocked outrage by Obama supporters.

“What happened that my Social Security withholding’s in my paycheck just went up?” a poster wrote on the liberal site DemocraticUnderground.com. “My paycheck just went down by an amount that I don’t feel comfortable with. I guarantee this decrease is gonna’ hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over 400 grand. What happened?”

[...]

“My boyfriend has had a lot of expenses and is feeling squeezed right now, and having his paycheck shrink really didn’t help,” wrote “DemocratToTheEnd.”

Now of course, some obamabots can't bring themselves to blame Obama because they reelected him despite the fact that Mitt Romney and Republicans warned them Obama was going to raise their taxes, and they cannot cast the blame on Republicans because the GOP has been extremely vocal in the battle to extend all tax cuts, but they lost.

So those Obama supporters found someone else to blame:

“BlueIndyBlue” added: “Many of my friends didn’t realize it, either. Our payroll department didn’t do a good job of explaining the coming changes.”

It is the payroll departments fault.

More:

Some in the thread argued that the new tax — or the end of the “holiday,” which makes it a new tax — wouldn’t really amount to much. One calculated it would cost about $86 a month for most people. “Honeycombe8,” though, said that amount is nothing to sneeze at.

“$86 a month is a lot. That would pay for … Groceries for a week, as someone said. More than what I pay for parking every month, after my employer’s contribution to that. A new computer after a year. A new quality pair of shoes … every month. Months of my copay for my hormones. A new thick coat (on sale or at discount place). It would pay for what I spend on my dogs every month … food, vitamins, treats.”

Now, even before Obama is inaugurated for his second term, to which these very people are completely responsible for, they are already expressing buyer's remorse:

“Really, how am I ever supposed to pay off my student loans if my already small paycheck keeps getting smaller? Help a sister out, Obama,” wrote “Meet Virginia.” “Nancy Thongkham” was much more furious. “F***ing Obama! F*** you! This taking out more taxes s*** better f***ing help me out!! Very upset to see my paycheck less today!”

“_Alex™” sounded bummed. “Obama I did not vote for you so you can take away a lot of money from my checks.” Christian Dixon seemed crestfallen. “I’m starting to regret voting for Obama.” But “Dave” got his dander up over the tax hike: “Obama is the biggest f***ing liar in the world. Why the f*** did I vote for him”?

A quick note to Obama supporters, those that ran to the election polls and pulled that lever for Barack Obama.

Sit down and STFU, you voted for this, you got what you voted for and have absolutely no right whatsoever to complain about it now.

Deal with it... the rest of us have to because of your uninformed decisions.

Obamacare (PPACA) Taxes Explained

Hat tip: BY

“I absolutely reject that notion...For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase,” Obama said. “You can’t just make up that language and decide that that’s called a tax increase.”  --President Barack Hussein Obama, 2009 Interview with George Stephanopoulos

Here is a fantastic video from American College of Financial Services that sums up the taxes being levied by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, or "Obamacare") starting January 2013.  If you are a taxpayer filing singly earning > $200,000, or filing jointly earning > $250,000, you will be hit hardest by these new taxes.

So with all the rhetoric about protecting the "middle class," if you earn over $200-$250k, you are considered rich and deserve to be taxed more.  It appears the middle class is being slowly squeezed through the ceiling for the "middle class" being established at $200-250k while simultaneously using Quantitative Easing 3 (or "QE Infinity") to devalue the dollar, forcing a person to earn more to maintain their lifestyle.  Those in the middle class may soon find themselves bumping up against the $200/250k ceiling which discourages them from earning more.

I feel for the people trying to get by in places like the Northeast and the West Coast where the cost of living is already high...the Democratic base, by the way.

Link to video: Post Election PPACA Tax Implications

Link to article where President Barack Hussein Obama declares that Obamacare is not a tax: http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2012/06/28/obamas-obamacare-bait-switch/

--Against All Enemies

Against All Enemies Blog: http://aaenemies.blogspot.com
AAE on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AgainstAllEnemies (Click "Like")
AAE on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/@AAEnemies

Disclaimer: These opinions are solely my own, and do not reflect the opinions or official positions of any United States Government agency, organization or department.

Obama Officials Desperately Run From Supreme Court Ruling Of Individual Mandate As A Tax

By Susan Duclos

Cross posted from Wake up America

A person would have to be living under a rock to not know that the Supreme Court ruled the individual mandate part of Obamacare constitutional under the Tax Code, legally defining it as a tax. Economists and the CBO has found that 75 percent of Obamacare taxes will hit families making under $120,000 a year, the middle class, so to speak.

Barack Obama's reelection team, officials, administration, and Democrats as well as Democratic surrogates find themselves in a quandary here because they want to celebrate the the survival of Obamacare in the courts, but are twisting themselves into pretzels to deny that the only way the individual mandate was able to be saved was under the Tax Code because the court stated clearly that under the guise that Obama and Democrats passed the bill, using the Commerce or Necessary and Proper Clauses, the individual mandate would have been unconstitutional.

(See Comprehensive List Of Obamacare Tax Hikes With Effective Dates- HERE. The individual mandate excise tax is number 17 on the embedded list.)

The reason for this is because in 2008 and 2009, Obama stated, multiple times, that he would never raise taxes on families that make under $250,000 a year.

3. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–B that the individual mandate must be construed as imposing a tax on those who do not have health insurance, if such a construction is reasonable.

The most straightforward reading of the individual mandate is that it commands individuals to purchase insurance. But, for the reasons explained, the Commerce Clause does not give Congress that power.It is therefore necessary to turn to the Government’s alternative argument: that the mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s power to “lay and collect Taxes.” Art. I, §8, cl. 1. In pressing its taxing power argument, the Government asks the Court to view the mandate as imposing a tax on those who do not buy that product. Because “every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality,” Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648, 657, the question is whether it is “fairly possible” to interpret the mandate as imposing such a tax, Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62. Pp. 31–32.

4. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Part III–C, concluding that the individual mandate may be upheld as within Congress’s power under the Taxing Clause. Pp. 33–44

Court opinion found HERE. (The above quote is from the Syllabus, page  3 and 4)

The latest in the group of Obama surrogates to turn themselves inside out trying to deny that the individual mandate is a tax, is Obama White House Chief of Staff, Jack Lew.

[WATCH]







Have to hand it to Chris Wallace above for refusing to let Lew get away with the direct lie, then playing the audio of Obama's own lawyer, arguing to the Supreme Court that "Not only is it fair to read this as an exercise to the tax power, but this court has got an obligation to construe it as an exercise of the tax power if it can be upheld on that basis."

This follows other  Obama mouth pieces, such as White House spokesman, Jay Carney, who told reporters the day after the Supreme Court ruled the individual mandate as a tax, "It's a penalty, because you have a choice. You don't have a choice to pay your taxes, right."

Obama surrogate, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick told reporters on a conference call, "Don't believe the hype that the other side is selling. This is a penalty."

Politico reports that Nancy Pelosi almost used the forbidden word "tax" to describe it before she caught herself:

"It's a penalty that comes under the Tax Code," Pelosi said on NBC's "Meet The Press" as host David Gregory pressed her to say whether she agreed with the Supreme Court, which deemed the law constitutional because the fee used to enforce the individual mandate amounts to a tax, or with President Barack Obama, who has maintained the fee is not a tax.

"It's a ta—; it’s a penalty for free riders," Pelosi said, nearly uttering the dreaded T-word before cutting herself off.

From the disclaimers, denials and outright lies Democrats, liberals, Obama surrogates and Obama administration officials, are spouting, one would think they lost the Obamacare case instead of winning it.