What is the apocalypse? Why does the word ring across time? Drumming doom around the globe from our ancient forefather through evolving generations? How is it that such an idea become so entrenched in humankind? It's there….We don't question the fact that it resides in minds and fabrics of all societies.
When ideas hang around a long time usually it's because it is related to an iconic human experience.
The word apocalypse simply means destruction or devastation of something. Something coming to an end. Most common association is the end of the entire world. Noah's flood was both the end as known of his current world and it was starting anew.
Each individual's world has a start and end. Nations have started, flourished, and then passed..History's timeline is a trail of starts and endings. Apocalyptic to all peoples and nations reflected on history's trail. So when this idea emerges as it does every so often the question is when, where, and whose ending will be next?
SO FAR, every predictor has been wrong about the apocalypse as applied to the entire world….However, we see all around us each day things beginning and ending…We accept this is as a common human life experience.
Anxieties are running high in this country and around the globe. We are in wars, uprisings, overthrown governments, failures in social systems, losses of freedoms, and most importantly, for so many loss of hope. Hope has been man's mainstay….. Hope the crops would be better, hope the baby would get well, and hope that we would be safe. Each generation has done what it could to make their hopes come true.
Since humankind was able we have sought safe havens. Good caves where openings could be blocked, walls around our settlements, police on our streets, and standing armies; food supplies, healing hands, with communities for mutual support. Seemed right and the right things to do and we did them. We did all the right things and we did them in spades.
We live longer and prosper at levels unimagined in our grandfathers' days.
We have more of everything. The more we have the more we have to lose. This apocalyptic foreboding finds its way into our daily lives. Now this sense of danger is pervasive within families, communities, and nations. Even when there are no enemies defined, one is sought in the dark boogieman shadows, what is happening down the street, or the chaos across the world. As this anxiety continues to rise and reaches into the hearts and minds, hope begins to lose it footing first among people who are most impacted. The unemployed, the uneducated, the educated unemployed, the under employed and to a different extent everyone else who whisper daily, "Yet by the grace of God…".
Apocalypse describes impending doom and sense is what has pulled us together in the Tea Party. We feel the threat daily and we believe we have identified the danger, we know how to protect ourselves, we have a plan, we are acting on our plan and come next week, in a private voting booth, in our way as Americans voters will begin to mark an end to an oppressive government and the failed leaders in it. We are the ones we've been waiting for…We will fix our problems and clean our hearth.
The founding fathers created a set of ideas on how a good government should operate but warned of failure should or when the wrong leaders come to power with personal power being their goal. They warned that these men would be given their power through their purchase of votes and of voters wanting something for nothing. Voters who had no moral qualms about using the government to take money and wealth from people who earned it and giving it to them without strings or consequences attached. Providing them with food, medical care, housing for life. Before we read class conflict into this know that it was our compassion, beliefs, and values as a people that supported and encouraged government to create this morass of social programs that has now destroyed three generations of one of our minority citizens groups and is now turning its attention to yet other minority groups. There is yet another group being defined by our government and that is the young, well educated, unemployed being invited into the arms of warm government 'well bless their heart' programs.
If this seduction of our young educated children for this president works this would be a true apocalyptic moment.
Try as we might we have never truly separated church and state. The Ten Commandments can be taken down from our courthouses, prayers can be stopped at sporting events as well as all other events, do whatever else can be thought of but a person's religious beliefs get reflected in all that they do….even politicians. If we start examining the core of our Christian beliefs of one people, God children, brother's keepers, we can understand better how we, through our complicity and good intentions, allowed the nation to become liberal, socialist, progressive, and voted for people, over decades, who hold these values. None of which are bad things in and by themselves. None...
Up until eighty years ago everyone knew they had to take care of themselves and their families. No one questioned that because that was the common sense of it. The uestion might be is the idea of personal responsibility something most citizens want to return to? Before we jump to what would seem like the obvious answer know that the standard of living of the middle class has come about in a big part through government's assistance via the tax code. Do we really want to lose our home mortgage deductions and therefore be fully responsible for buying our home? This question could be reframed in a dozen of different ways covering all of the 'little perks' that helps politicians with their middle class voter's block. (Have you ever thought of yourself as a voting block? Well, they do and they find ways to buy middle class loyalty as well as others.)
Let's look at some of the thinking within the Tea groups around the country. What they want and what they hope can be accomplished in the next election. Here is the wish list:
1. Repeal Obamacare
2. Reduce duplicative purchases of Pentagon supplies
3. Eliminate the Department of Education
4. Privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
5. Reduce discretionary spending to 2008 level
6. Block grant Medicaid
7. End ethanol tax credits
8. Sell needless federal buildings
9. Eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development
10. Balance the federal budget
This wish list is what many voters want elected officials to do once they get elected.….IF there was a clear control, after the elections in 2012, over the three branches of government then all ten of these wishes on the 'to dos' list could be melded into one bill, passed by both house, and have the president's signature in one short day. BAM its over…Then what? Hopefully close a bunch of the federal departments thrown into the hopper... OK….That would be very good also….
We are still left with a question mark sitting out there in all its glory... (?) Blinking a 'code' saying we must fill in the blank before we can proceed to the next square….
Given the few ideas of importance 'our home discussion meetings' have come up with over the last few years it seems that, 1) We must be clear on what we want government to do and how we want government to interact with us in our personal and national life….2)To define for ourselves what are our responsibilities as citizens and meet those responsibilities…3)What we want government to do at a national/international level and direct them to do only those things…. You wouldn't think it would take any group such a long time to come to these simple ideas but it did… Why? What is so difficult and frankly old ideas?...Us…It is us and the way we are living fuller and more complex lives. The idea of taking on one more responsibility is simply one more to many. So we say, but not out loud, let the other guy do it…Well, what it comes to, the 'other guy' is the government. We even pay the government to take on more responsibilities that may well be our responsibilities as citizens.
Already the tune is getting familiar….Romney is not as bad as "X". "X" is not as bad as "Y". Familiar thinking? You bet.
A posted comment by a member yesterday: LORD HELP US FIND A LEADER... That comment pretty well sums up where we see we are with these candidates in this election cycle. It is an awful experience to end up voting for someone because you don't think they are as bad as the other one….How many time have we all done this and promised ourselves we would never do it again.
Come January, 2013 the 'change plan' needs to be up and running with everyone on board with a new Speaker of the House, new Speaker of the Senate, new Head of the Senate, and a sparkling new President. What is going to get done will get done in the first ninety or one hundred and twenty days of the new administration. After that time line things will start bogging down…Just the sheer weight of the government will slow itself down…Look back at 1995... With all bases covered, more or less, things ground to a timid crawl after ninety days and the voters who worked hard to elect a conservative congress took long naps. Say what? What got said was that even the most conservative congress, with clearly defined goals, a will to act, will start slowing and the grand mission will start getting muddled after three or four months…AND-that-be-our-history…
Just for the heck of it, why don't we begin to take a good look and see what 'needs' there are in each of our communities. Once we can come up with a few 'needs' then decide these needs are best met by government or by us? (If it's something like streets lights then government for sure but if it's social then it may well be something we should do.) If it's government that is the one that should meet the need then let us push them to do it….and help them with the project and the funding.
Just for fun lets take a moment to look at some of the 'social' ideas that the discussion meetings have come up with…. I will just present one of the ideas.
Homeless: The best guess by the Oxford city fathers is that there are between forty and sixty homeless men and women around town at any given time. People, who for whatever reason, lost jobs, homes, accidents, physical and mental illness, addictions of one kind or another. There are little resources to help them…One group in town focuses of the homeless and the group is always short of money….
We have right at fifty thousand people living in our county. What would happen IF half, twenty five thousand, committed to one dollar a week for 26 weeks into a fund to build a facility to offer shelter... With $650,000.00 you could buy land and build a number of large dormitories…Once built there are state and federal funds to help will all the basic ongoing funding needs…. Then say once a year these same contributors could come back for six to eight weeks for another dollar a week for backup funding.
Would any of the contributors miss a dollar a week? Once completed would these contributors feel like they had accomplished something? Might there be a level of pride in this piece of good work….?
Assuming this would be worth doing could we not then do the same thing in other towns and cities in Mississippi?
Is something like this a social issue, a moral issue, a ethical issue for individuals or is this something that should be a government problem to solve.
Going forward we in the Tea Party along with other must sort out what responsibilities we must shoulder and what are things we want government to see to…
Next Week…November 8th ...We're going to move the House...
'Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero'
Ron
docnick37@gmail.com
http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/
Monday, October 31, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
First Aim With Care - Then Shoot Your Foot
So, it looks like the plan is for all of our Republican candidates to come together and redundantly inform all the presidential television debate viewers how dumb and despicable each are. Then, from this slash and burn stage, one will be left to represent the conservative voters….The plan is working... Everyone is shooting themselves and everyone else in the foot...
Is it possible that all the candidates are so dumb that they are willing to continue to participate in this new Reality TV Show rightly named 'Destroy all Political Conservative Hopes?' Ten more of these 'TV' embarrassments and Obama will not have anyone to run against.
The good thing Newt is seen more and more as the experienced statesman he is….The gap between his understanding and his experience as a political leader and all the others is clearly obvious and somewhat stunning.
In the last article from The Oxford Tea Party we talked about Romney…Started with him because he was leading in the polls. Next man on this totem poll is Herman 999 Cain…
Herman Cain wrote the following in an article. ( I suspect to his regret, last year.)
Here are three of the biggest reasons the national retail sales tax is the worst idea on the table.
First, we have a spending problem in Washington, D.C. not a revenue problem. The Commission claims their goal is to reduce the deficits by $4 trillion over the next decade. The task force says its plan would save $6 trillion by 2020. It’s sort of like dueling promises that would never happen, because when has a proposed cut in Washington D.C. ever produced the intended savings over 10 years? Never!
Even worse is reason number two: In every country that has established a VAT with the promise of reducing their national debt, the VAT has eventually gone up or expanded on top of the existing tax structure. After discovering many of the tax grenades in the recently passed health care deform bill, which is already driving costs up and access down, it would be real easy for an overzealous bureaucrat to insert the language in the legislation “national retail and wholesale” tax.
For the liberal naysayers who say that would not happen, you lose! Just look at the Social Security system, Medicare and Medicaid. Over the years since their inception, taxes have gone up, benefits have gone down and they are still on a path of insolvency.
Both the Commission and the Task Force say very little about how costs would be contained, because that’s the real big bodacious problem. Even if their plans could achieve their stated goals over the next 10 years, the current administration and Congress have increased spending nearly $4 trillion in the last two years. And the only hope that it will slow down is the new change of control in the House of Representatives.
Giving the administration and Congress another tool to tax us and confuse us is like giving an alcoholic a key to the liquor store with no supervision, only to discover that he locks the door after he is safely inside.
A national retail sales tax on top of all the confusing and unfair taxes we have today is insane! It gives the out-of-control bureaucrats and politicians in denial one more tool to lie, deceive, manipulate and destroy this country.
The third reason the national retail sales tax on top of all the taxes we already pay is a bad idea, is that there is already proposed legislation that replaces all of the federal taxes we pay. It replaces all current revenue. It supercharges our national economic growth, and puts the national economic growth, and puts the power of taxation back into the hands of the people who spend their money.
Thanks Herman…We think so also…Can we now put aside the 999 notions for good?
Last night in the 'debate' everyone pretty much lambasted Herman's '999' plan and him with it. Lots of good qualities in this man. However, the issue in not 'is he a good man that has contributed and will continue to contribute to this nation' but is he experienced and knowledgably enough to lead the most powerful nation in the history of the world? (We know what lack of experience can mean because we have such a man in office now. ) As we each do our emotional soul searching about Herman I think we will be able to answer the above question.
We will continue to look at the other candidates in upcoming articles but for the moment and if common sense was at work, a number of these 'want-to-be' would pack it up….Its hard not to love Ron Paul but he will never be the president of this country or its vice president. He knows it and we know it…With Rick just remember, he was turned out of office for a reason and his appearances in the staged debacles remind us of 'why.'
In dark moments, every now and then, I wonder how it's possible with 300 million people we can't find many (sometimes I wonder IF any) leaders. Now more than any time in our history there are more opportunities for people to develop leadership skills. This make no sense. Could it be that the potential leaders are out there somewhere hidden in a sea of faces being confused as just the person who lives next door?
Not every small business man is a leader but every small business man leads…Here is the most untapped leadership group in America. This group is in daily touch with the customers he/she serves. He/she know if they do not respond to the heart beat of the people the business serves they will have 'no business.' This is the group that hires and fires most workers in America. They are the core of our GDP. They are the little-shots not the big-shots. The Presidents of GE, or Ford, or ATT have seldom, if ever, looked a customer in the eye and yet they are the very people called on by each and every government for advice on how to fix this or that in the economy. The elite, and elitist in government, by ignorance and default, are destroying everything this nation has been.
Also, in dark moment I begin to wonder just how much damage is done each and everyday by the two national parties. Clearly more citizens are responding by becoming independent. These are the folks who do not trust these national parties any longer. The backlash from their departing is they leave the national party leaders with a greater steadfast group within their parties and control over who runs for office becomes easier. This does not give them control over election outcomes but allows them to keep their power which is the purpose of power.
"If ever a time should come when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." …….Samuel Adams, 1776 ...........
We are not in a vacuum, nor in the doldrums, nor in a slow recovery. This is a full blown crisis. The downside, if we have reached the downside, is really dangerous. The upside is (historically) only when there is a crisis do we make changes.
What the Tea Party and its supporters are doing is addressing changes from the local school board level to the presidential level. That is a huge bite. Mostly this looks doable BUT not without more help. There is an important group of voter from 18 to 34 who are as enamored with the current President as they were when they attended his campaign shows. They have money to contribute and they have friends they can sway. How to reach them…..? Next big group of needed voters are young people in college… This group has been talked about before. (AND probably again). This is the group that will be forced to spend most of their working lives paying off these unthinkable national debts, if they can be paid off at all. This group, although literate in math don't understand the national debt math. The way you know this group doesn't understand what this President and government has done and continues to do is because you are not seeing them, in Washington, tearing down the House and Senate buildings.
Some Tea Party groups are forming on campuses but not nearly enough. We need to find ways to support them…We must…. They are the very people who will be needed to continue the Tea Party movement. What a different country this might be had we, when we were their age, had the Tea movement and at least one national media supporting the conservative ideas.
The last election cycle was a success for us. We came up a little short on the Senate side. It will difficult, no doubt, but the Senate look possible the next go around. The other big problem is we have to elect even more new members in the House to overcome the old Republican guard. Who knew? Who would have guessed the real struggle in the House would be the entrenched Republicans in the house.
The media says the Tea Party is racist because it is predominantly white. Last time I noticed America was predominantly white. I expect the Black Congressional caucus is made up of black congress people. I expect a Hispanic group to be made up mostly of Hispanic people. As a percentage of the population the Tea Party seems to have, more or less, members who reflect these minority groups as a percentage. So the question might be do I/we care what the liberal media says? The elite in the media see the world out of their beliefs and biases. I know their primary bias is that the Tea members are dumb rednecks who they dare not trust. Seems right because we don't trust them. End of story….
If we need any other reasons to work as hard as we can on the election that is now only eleven months away here is another reason: In 2041 your children's children will look around thirty nine years from now and notice that white folks like themselves will not be the dominate race in America. People who have never lived in California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico have no real way of imagining this nor any idea of the consequence. (Look closely at California, its state government, and the consequence of the changing demographics. Google search the list of name in the California House.)
CALIFORNIA'S HISPANIC LEADERS SPEAK OUT
Richard Alatorre, Los Angeles City Council. "They're afraid we're going to take over the governmental institutions and other institutions. They're right. We will take them over . . . We are here to stay."
Excelsior, the national newspaper of Mexico , "The American Southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single shot."
Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez, University of Texas ; "We have an aging white America . They are not making babies. They are dying. The explosion is in our population . . . I love it.
Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democratic Party, "Remember 187--proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services to non-citizens--was the last gasp of white America in California ."
Gloria Molina, Los Angeles County Supervisor, "We are politicizing every single one of these new citizens that are becoming citizens of this country . . ... I gotta tell you that a lot of people are saying, "I'm going to go out there and vote because I want to pay them back."
Mario Obledo, California Coalition of Hispanic Organizations and California State Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Governor Jerry Brown, also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, " California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn't like it should leave."
Jose Pescador Osuna, Mexican Consul General, "We are practicing 'La Reconquista' in California ..."
Professor Fernando Guerra, Loyola Marymount University ; "We need to avoid a white backlash by using codes understood by Latinos . . . "
In the decades of living in California my wife and I experienced this demographics shift and began to see the consequences before we left the state. Many of these Hispanic leaders quoted we watched organize and work their way up the political ranks….These quoted statements tell a story that needs to be heard and the emotional content of the quotes needs to be understood by all quickly. California didn't listen. It expanded liberal social programs, embraced all who crossed it's boarder, and refused to see the warning signs.
Complaints about Hispanics first surfaced in the boarder states and now has now spread to many other states. The complaints, for the most part, has focused on jobs, cost of education, social programs, etc. It's not just Hispanics there are other complaints starting with other minorities groups such as Muslim, Korean, along with other immigrants we have let in for one reason or another. All of these groups are out growing the local white population in their communities. Farther down the road the real problem is taking shape. Seismic shifts in demographics that will become fatal to this or any other representative form of government anywhere. Ask any European country what is their experience. Ask France with a reported twenty two percent of Muslim immigrants. Paris has given up policing some parts of their city. Sections of London are gone to immigrants areas. Enough said for the moment….
Can you imagine how the country, government, or liberal media would have responded if anyone in the Tea Party said anything like what these Hispanic leaders said in California?
Let me leave you with these thoughts of the day from Thomas Sowell...
Like so many other leaders, in so many countries, who start out to "spread the wealth, Barack Obama has ended up spreading poverty.
Most of us lament the fact that so many people are today dependent on food stamps and other government subsidies. But dependency usually translates into votes for whoever is handing out the benefits, so an economic disaster can be a political bonanza, as it was for Franklin Roosevelt. Don't count Obama out in 2012.
If he was debating Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich could chew him up and spit him out...
Thomas Sowell is one of a number of conservative black writers (there aren't many) that I always enjoy reading and particularly Sowell's 'Thoughts of the Day.'
Go to the Hoover Institute site and you can find lots of his writings.
I think his warning about Obama in 2012 needs to be taken very seriously.
Read the warning signs of the demographic shift taking place...be afraid for our grandchildren.
Ron
docnick37@gmail.com
http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/
Is it possible that all the candidates are so dumb that they are willing to continue to participate in this new Reality TV Show rightly named 'Destroy all Political Conservative Hopes?' Ten more of these 'TV' embarrassments and Obama will not have anyone to run against.
The good thing Newt is seen more and more as the experienced statesman he is….The gap between his understanding and his experience as a political leader and all the others is clearly obvious and somewhat stunning.
In the last article from The Oxford Tea Party we talked about Romney…Started with him because he was leading in the polls. Next man on this totem poll is Herman 999 Cain…
Herman Cain wrote the following in an article. ( I suspect to his regret, last year.)
Here are three of the biggest reasons the national retail sales tax is the worst idea on the table.
First, we have a spending problem in Washington, D.C. not a revenue problem. The Commission claims their goal is to reduce the deficits by $4 trillion over the next decade. The task force says its plan would save $6 trillion by 2020. It’s sort of like dueling promises that would never happen, because when has a proposed cut in Washington D.C. ever produced the intended savings over 10 years? Never!
Even worse is reason number two: In every country that has established a VAT with the promise of reducing their national debt, the VAT has eventually gone up or expanded on top of the existing tax structure. After discovering many of the tax grenades in the recently passed health care deform bill, which is already driving costs up and access down, it would be real easy for an overzealous bureaucrat to insert the language in the legislation “national retail and wholesale” tax.
For the liberal naysayers who say that would not happen, you lose! Just look at the Social Security system, Medicare and Medicaid. Over the years since their inception, taxes have gone up, benefits have gone down and they are still on a path of insolvency.
Both the Commission and the Task Force say very little about how costs would be contained, because that’s the real big bodacious problem. Even if their plans could achieve their stated goals over the next 10 years, the current administration and Congress have increased spending nearly $4 trillion in the last two years. And the only hope that it will slow down is the new change of control in the House of Representatives.
Giving the administration and Congress another tool to tax us and confuse us is like giving an alcoholic a key to the liquor store with no supervision, only to discover that he locks the door after he is safely inside.
A national retail sales tax on top of all the confusing and unfair taxes we have today is insane! It gives the out-of-control bureaucrats and politicians in denial one more tool to lie, deceive, manipulate and destroy this country.
The third reason the national retail sales tax on top of all the taxes we already pay is a bad idea, is that there is already proposed legislation that replaces all of the federal taxes we pay. It replaces all current revenue. It supercharges our national economic growth, and puts the national economic growth, and puts the power of taxation back into the hands of the people who spend their money.
Thanks Herman…We think so also…Can we now put aside the 999 notions for good?
Last night in the 'debate' everyone pretty much lambasted Herman's '999' plan and him with it. Lots of good qualities in this man. However, the issue in not 'is he a good man that has contributed and will continue to contribute to this nation' but is he experienced and knowledgably enough to lead the most powerful nation in the history of the world? (We know what lack of experience can mean because we have such a man in office now. ) As we each do our emotional soul searching about Herman I think we will be able to answer the above question.
We will continue to look at the other candidates in upcoming articles but for the moment and if common sense was at work, a number of these 'want-to-be' would pack it up….Its hard not to love Ron Paul but he will never be the president of this country or its vice president. He knows it and we know it…With Rick just remember, he was turned out of office for a reason and his appearances in the staged debacles remind us of 'why.'
In dark moments, every now and then, I wonder how it's possible with 300 million people we can't find many (sometimes I wonder IF any) leaders. Now more than any time in our history there are more opportunities for people to develop leadership skills. This make no sense. Could it be that the potential leaders are out there somewhere hidden in a sea of faces being confused as just the person who lives next door?
Not every small business man is a leader but every small business man leads…Here is the most untapped leadership group in America. This group is in daily touch with the customers he/she serves. He/she know if they do not respond to the heart beat of the people the business serves they will have 'no business.' This is the group that hires and fires most workers in America. They are the core of our GDP. They are the little-shots not the big-shots. The Presidents of GE, or Ford, or ATT have seldom, if ever, looked a customer in the eye and yet they are the very people called on by each and every government for advice on how to fix this or that in the economy. The elite, and elitist in government, by ignorance and default, are destroying everything this nation has been.
Also, in dark moment I begin to wonder just how much damage is done each and everyday by the two national parties. Clearly more citizens are responding by becoming independent. These are the folks who do not trust these national parties any longer. The backlash from their departing is they leave the national party leaders with a greater steadfast group within their parties and control over who runs for office becomes easier. This does not give them control over election outcomes but allows them to keep their power which is the purpose of power.
"If ever a time should come when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." …….Samuel Adams, 1776 ...........
We are not in a vacuum, nor in the doldrums, nor in a slow recovery. This is a full blown crisis. The downside, if we have reached the downside, is really dangerous. The upside is (historically) only when there is a crisis do we make changes.
What the Tea Party and its supporters are doing is addressing changes from the local school board level to the presidential level. That is a huge bite. Mostly this looks doable BUT not without more help. There is an important group of voter from 18 to 34 who are as enamored with the current President as they were when they attended his campaign shows. They have money to contribute and they have friends they can sway. How to reach them…..? Next big group of needed voters are young people in college… This group has been talked about before. (AND probably again). This is the group that will be forced to spend most of their working lives paying off these unthinkable national debts, if they can be paid off at all. This group, although literate in math don't understand the national debt math. The way you know this group doesn't understand what this President and government has done and continues to do is because you are not seeing them, in Washington, tearing down the House and Senate buildings.
Some Tea Party groups are forming on campuses but not nearly enough. We need to find ways to support them…We must…. They are the very people who will be needed to continue the Tea Party movement. What a different country this might be had we, when we were their age, had the Tea movement and at least one national media supporting the conservative ideas.
The last election cycle was a success for us. We came up a little short on the Senate side. It will difficult, no doubt, but the Senate look possible the next go around. The other big problem is we have to elect even more new members in the House to overcome the old Republican guard. Who knew? Who would have guessed the real struggle in the House would be the entrenched Republicans in the house.
The media says the Tea Party is racist because it is predominantly white. Last time I noticed America was predominantly white. I expect the Black Congressional caucus is made up of black congress people. I expect a Hispanic group to be made up mostly of Hispanic people. As a percentage of the population the Tea Party seems to have, more or less, members who reflect these minority groups as a percentage. So the question might be do I/we care what the liberal media says? The elite in the media see the world out of their beliefs and biases. I know their primary bias is that the Tea members are dumb rednecks who they dare not trust. Seems right because we don't trust them. End of story….
If we need any other reasons to work as hard as we can on the election that is now only eleven months away here is another reason: In 2041 your children's children will look around thirty nine years from now and notice that white folks like themselves will not be the dominate race in America. People who have never lived in California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico have no real way of imagining this nor any idea of the consequence. (Look closely at California, its state government, and the consequence of the changing demographics. Google search the list of name in the California House.)
CALIFORNIA'S HISPANIC LEADERS SPEAK OUT
Richard Alatorre, Los Angeles City Council. "They're afraid we're going to take over the governmental institutions and other institutions. They're right. We will take them over . . . We are here to stay."
Excelsior, the national newspaper of Mexico , "The American Southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single shot."
Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez, University of Texas ; "We have an aging white America . They are not making babies. They are dying. The explosion is in our population . . . I love it.
Art Torres, Chairman of the California Democratic Party, "Remember 187--proposition to deny taxpayer funds for services to non-citizens--was the last gasp of white America in California ."
Gloria Molina, Los Angeles County Supervisor, "We are politicizing every single one of these new citizens that are becoming citizens of this country . . ... I gotta tell you that a lot of people are saying, "I'm going to go out there and vote because I want to pay them back."
Mario Obledo, California Coalition of Hispanic Organizations and California State Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Governor Jerry Brown, also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, " California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn't like it should leave."
Jose Pescador Osuna, Mexican Consul General, "We are practicing 'La Reconquista' in California ..."
Professor Fernando Guerra, Loyola Marymount University ; "We need to avoid a white backlash by using codes understood by Latinos . . . "
In the decades of living in California my wife and I experienced this demographics shift and began to see the consequences before we left the state. Many of these Hispanic leaders quoted we watched organize and work their way up the political ranks….These quoted statements tell a story that needs to be heard and the emotional content of the quotes needs to be understood by all quickly. California didn't listen. It expanded liberal social programs, embraced all who crossed it's boarder, and refused to see the warning signs.
Complaints about Hispanics first surfaced in the boarder states and now has now spread to many other states. The complaints, for the most part, has focused on jobs, cost of education, social programs, etc. It's not just Hispanics there are other complaints starting with other minorities groups such as Muslim, Korean, along with other immigrants we have let in for one reason or another. All of these groups are out growing the local white population in their communities. Farther down the road the real problem is taking shape. Seismic shifts in demographics that will become fatal to this or any other representative form of government anywhere. Ask any European country what is their experience. Ask France with a reported twenty two percent of Muslim immigrants. Paris has given up policing some parts of their city. Sections of London are gone to immigrants areas. Enough said for the moment….
Can you imagine how the country, government, or liberal media would have responded if anyone in the Tea Party said anything like what these Hispanic leaders said in California?
Let me leave you with these thoughts of the day from Thomas Sowell...
Like so many other leaders, in so many countries, who start out to "spread the wealth, Barack Obama has ended up spreading poverty.
Most of us lament the fact that so many people are today dependent on food stamps and other government subsidies. But dependency usually translates into votes for whoever is handing out the benefits, so an economic disaster can be a political bonanza, as it was for Franklin Roosevelt. Don't count Obama out in 2012.
If he was debating Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich could chew him up and spit him out...
Thomas Sowell is one of a number of conservative black writers (there aren't many) that I always enjoy reading and particularly Sowell's 'Thoughts of the Day.'
Go to the Hoover Institute site and you can find lots of his writings.
I think his warning about Obama in 2012 needs to be taken very seriously.
Read the warning signs of the demographic shift taking place...be afraid for our grandchildren.
Ron
docnick37@gmail.com
http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
…Romney VS Romney And His History...
At this point surely everyone reading these articles from The Oxford Tea Party has a pretty clear idea there is a great deal of worry about our crop of presidential candidates. From the comments I receive from many readers they are also just as unhappy. Since so many states are moving up their primaries for anyone new to come into the race time is rapidly running out.
At the moment all of the candidates are 'playing' to the conservative base with the ' I am more conservative than the others story.' BUT… (Notice the caps) As soon as the leader of the pack feels he/she has their conservative base in tow the tune will change. That song is called 'Move to the Center'. We all know the melody and have heard the words so many time we can sing along with the choir.
At a very practical level the center moderate voter along with many independence moderate voters are the deciding voters. Period. Not complex math in any of this… Simple head count tells the story.. What is complex for us is the art of understanding the candidate's character. Is he principled, what are his real values, how does he see government's role in our unique society? So important but so difficult to understand.
We know candidates will say anything they think we want to hear. OK…That's part of the political game…Since the stakes in this election are so high we need to be diligent. Politicians, like leopards, do not change their spots…How they have walked in their history says more than what they are softly murmuring in our ears about being conservative to the core, being against big government, cutting spending, lowering taxes, and the constitution being so dear to their hearts. (Well, I think most of us can still remember what the goal was for soft murmuring in ears?)
Fortunately we have a few ways of divining out some of this political riddle….Most of these candidates have a history of walking in politics and they have left foot prints. Often large..So we can look back..Not with the eye of voter but with the eye of a citizen.
Let's begin with the leader in the polls - Romney - but not by much…
What follows is very good article from Eric Erickson. Let me encourage you, if your are not reading or not on the Redstate e-mail list, visit the web site. Sign on…Redstate was the primary sponsor of the last presidential debate. (Note: The next big Redstate rally will be in August in Florida. Join the Redstate site and get the details.)
This article addresses Romney's history in regard to health care. However, his defensive position on his health care program when he was governor may answer many questions we have about him as a conservative leader, his character, his beliefs, his values, and how he sees government's place in people's lives.
Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com
The big news yesterday on the health care policy front is that the 11th Circuit case against the individual mandate is headed to the Supreme Court before the 2012 election, not after.This means a decision about the constitutionality of the individual mandate is likely to come in mid-2012, after the Republicans have chosen a nominee but well before the election ramp up.
This is good political news for nearly everyone in the race on the Republican side, with one obvious exception: Mitt Romney.
Let’s back up a moment to explain why. There’s one line that Romney used in Florida during the most recent debate which is still sticking in my craw today, and I’m having a hard time shaking it. Excerpt – in response to a question from Chris Wallace about Perry referring to Romney’s Massachusetts’ reforms as “socialized medicine”:
“I don’t think [Perry] knows what he was talking about in that — in that regard. Let me tell you this about our system in Massachusetts: 92 percent of our people were insured before we put our plan in place. Nothing’s changed for them. The system is the same. They have private market-based insurance. We had 8 percent of our people that weren’t insured. And so what we did is we said let’s find a way to get them insurance, again, market-based private insurance. We didn’t come up with some new government insurance plan.”
Now, there’s a factual criticism here regarding the latter part of his comments, and the way people get that insurance under Romney’s plan – namely, the overwhelming number of those newly covered are subsidized by other taxpayers, and are on Medicaid, not private market-based insurance. This is directly the opposite of Romney’s case for his plan in 2007 and 2008, where he explicitly framed the matter not as a Massachusetts-specific solution, but as he said on the day he signed the bill into law, the “Republican way of solving a problem which we face as a nation.” He’s continued to maintain his approach is a “Republican way to reform the marketplace” which ensured personal responsibility, as opposed to “expecting someone else to pay” for your own care.
This is ironic, given that the effect of his plan has been to shift health care costs for the newly covered (reducing the number of uninsured from a little over 9% to 4.4%) to the taxpayers. Of the 412,000 people added to the insurance rolls in Massachusetts since 2006, 47% are on Medicaid, and only 7,000 of them have coverage not subsidized by other taxpayers.
The same subsidy-driven flaw is at the heart of Obama’s federal law and Romney’s Massachusetts law – a profound disincentive to increase your self-sufficiency, to work more and to earn more, given that you stand to lose out on significant taxpayer funded subsidies:
“For example, a family earning $33,000 pays no premium at all under Commonwealth Care. But if their pay goes to $46,000, they’re obligated to contribute about $2,400. That’s an effective tax rate of 18.5% on that $13,000 raise.”
As you can tell, Romney’s policy is inherently redistributive, disincentivizing success and placing the overwhelming burden for the newly insured onto other taxpayers while doing little or nothing to leverage market forces to drive competitive costs. As Cato’s Michael Tanner pointed out in that piece: “It’s a situation where the entire escalation in costs is paid by the government, not the people receiving the care.”
But let’s put all that aside, because that’s not really the line that irks me from Romney’s statement. It’s the “nothing’s changed for them” line, which evokes so much of the misplaced optimism on Obama’s part that his national reform wouldn’t change things for the majority of Americans who like their insurance plans. Because things have changed for the 92% of insured people in Massachusetts in the five years since Romney’s reform passed. Namely: everything costs more.
Since Romney’s law went into effect, the cost of Massachusetts premiums have increased dramatically, at a much faster rate than the rest of the country. Today, the health insurance premium cost for the average family in Massachusetts is the highest in the nation. It is double the national average. And yes, that counts as a change.
This gets us back to SCOTUS and the individual mandate. When Romney originally passed his reform, he maintained that it – and the individual mandate within it – would become in time a model for the country. His first line in the 2010 edition of his book on this point was thus consistent with his past remarks of his solutions in Massachusetts becoming the basis for a nationwide approach.
But before I looked into this, I had assumed that – given Romney’s expressed opposition to the federal individual mandate – he would logically support its repeal. This is, surprisingly, not the case. When Romney was asked on his book tour in 2010 about whether he’d repeal the individual mandate, he apparently said “No.” Has he shifted away from this? Has anyone followed up on this point since he officially began his 2012 campaign? It seems like a rather relevant question.
Here’s an interview he gave while on that book tour:
NEWSWEEK: Back in February 2007, you said you hoped the Massachusetts plan would “become a model for the nation.” Would you agree that it has?
ROMNEY: I don’t … You’re going to have to get that quote. That’s not exactly accurate, I don’t believe.
NEWSWEEK: I can tell you exactly what it says: “I’m proud of what we’ve done. If Massachusetts succeeds in implementing it, then that will be a model for the nation.”
ROMNEY: It is a model for the states to be able to learn from. During the campaign, I was asked if I was proposing that what I did in Massachusetts I would do for the nation. And the answer was absolutely not. Our plan is a state plan. It is a model for other states—if you will, the nation—it is a model for them to look at what we’ve accomplished and to better it or to create their own plans.
One wonders what elements of this “model for other states – if you will, the nation” Romney is referring to. Is it the redistribution of costs? Is it the costly subsidies? Is it the skyrocketing premiums? Is it the price controls? Is it the individual mandate?
If the activity of Romney’s campaign is any indication, it seems unlikely that Romney’s view has shifted on any of these points. Just last week, they took time to bash yet another health care study illustrating how his reforms in Massachusetts raised premium costs and cost the state jobs, the second negative study in as many weeks. Rather than laying out Romney’s plan for health reform as president, they give all the indications of still fighting the last war.
In debates, Romney always cites his intention to grant waivers to all the states from Obamacare. That’s fine. But waivers are temporary, and do nothing to solve the long term problems of health care. Romney is essentially using the waivers as a substitute for proposing an actual reform, and should SCOTUS rule against the individual mandate, his utility in name checking waivers will likely dissipate.
What really matters – and this is true of all the Republican candidates – is what he’d do next to fix the system. This issue is currently clouded, but will enter the forefront if Obamacare is gutted or if the individual mandate is maintained. Whether Romney’s plan in Massachusetts is a model for the nation or not, it is all we have to go on when it comes to evaluating his model for reform as president. And his continued defense of his Massachusetts law, including the individual mandate, long past the point where more honest supporters have backed away slowly from its well-evident mistakes, indicates that as much as Romney has shifted over the years across the gamut of policy positions, there is one area where he will not budge: wherever he is on health policy at the moment you ask him a question - he is never wrong.
Thanks Mr. Eric….your untiring efforts are appreciated...
Well, my question to us is , "How can he or we think of him (Romney) as a conservative?" This Health Care law was just one on many left of liberal things he did as governor. This health care gets talked about because the National Heath Care has been a central focus of the current President. IF there is any further interest in Romney's political history just Google - Bills signed into law by Governor Romney…Get you a cup of coffee or any other adult beverage and read till your head and heart are satisfied that you know how Romney would lead this nation IF he should be elected.
For us to replace this current President in November of 2012 we need someone that we and other American can trust, respect, and emotionally attach to like we did with Reagan….Who? Which one? Is there one?
Next article we will take a look at another of our candidates for president.
Ron
docnick37@gmail.com
http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/
At the moment all of the candidates are 'playing' to the conservative base with the ' I am more conservative than the others story.' BUT… (Notice the caps) As soon as the leader of the pack feels he/she has their conservative base in tow the tune will change. That song is called 'Move to the Center'. We all know the melody and have heard the words so many time we can sing along with the choir.
At a very practical level the center moderate voter along with many independence moderate voters are the deciding voters. Period. Not complex math in any of this… Simple head count tells the story.. What is complex for us is the art of understanding the candidate's character. Is he principled, what are his real values, how does he see government's role in our unique society? So important but so difficult to understand.
We know candidates will say anything they think we want to hear. OK…That's part of the political game…Since the stakes in this election are so high we need to be diligent. Politicians, like leopards, do not change their spots…How they have walked in their history says more than what they are softly murmuring in our ears about being conservative to the core, being against big government, cutting spending, lowering taxes, and the constitution being so dear to their hearts. (Well, I think most of us can still remember what the goal was for soft murmuring in ears?)
Fortunately we have a few ways of divining out some of this political riddle….Most of these candidates have a history of walking in politics and they have left foot prints. Often large..So we can look back..Not with the eye of voter but with the eye of a citizen.
Let's begin with the leader in the polls - Romney - but not by much…
What follows is very good article from Eric Erickson. Let me encourage you, if your are not reading or not on the Redstate e-mail list, visit the web site. Sign on…Redstate was the primary sponsor of the last presidential debate. (Note: The next big Redstate rally will be in August in Florida. Join the Redstate site and get the details.)
This article addresses Romney's history in regard to health care. However, his defensive position on his health care program when he was governor may answer many questions we have about him as a conservative leader, his character, his beliefs, his values, and how he sees government's place in people's lives.
Erick Erickson
Editor, RedState.com
The big news yesterday on the health care policy front is that the 11th Circuit case against the individual mandate is headed to the Supreme Court before the 2012 election, not after.This means a decision about the constitutionality of the individual mandate is likely to come in mid-2012, after the Republicans have chosen a nominee but well before the election ramp up.
This is good political news for nearly everyone in the race on the Republican side, with one obvious exception: Mitt Romney.
Let’s back up a moment to explain why. There’s one line that Romney used in Florida during the most recent debate which is still sticking in my craw today, and I’m having a hard time shaking it. Excerpt – in response to a question from Chris Wallace about Perry referring to Romney’s Massachusetts’ reforms as “socialized medicine”:
“I don’t think [Perry] knows what he was talking about in that — in that regard. Let me tell you this about our system in Massachusetts: 92 percent of our people were insured before we put our plan in place. Nothing’s changed for them. The system is the same. They have private market-based insurance. We had 8 percent of our people that weren’t insured. And so what we did is we said let’s find a way to get them insurance, again, market-based private insurance. We didn’t come up with some new government insurance plan.”
Now, there’s a factual criticism here regarding the latter part of his comments, and the way people get that insurance under Romney’s plan – namely, the overwhelming number of those newly covered are subsidized by other taxpayers, and are on Medicaid, not private market-based insurance. This is directly the opposite of Romney’s case for his plan in 2007 and 2008, where he explicitly framed the matter not as a Massachusetts-specific solution, but as he said on the day he signed the bill into law, the “Republican way of solving a problem which we face as a nation.” He’s continued to maintain his approach is a “Republican way to reform the marketplace” which ensured personal responsibility, as opposed to “expecting someone else to pay” for your own care.
This is ironic, given that the effect of his plan has been to shift health care costs for the newly covered (reducing the number of uninsured from a little over 9% to 4.4%) to the taxpayers. Of the 412,000 people added to the insurance rolls in Massachusetts since 2006, 47% are on Medicaid, and only 7,000 of them have coverage not subsidized by other taxpayers.
The same subsidy-driven flaw is at the heart of Obama’s federal law and Romney’s Massachusetts law – a profound disincentive to increase your self-sufficiency, to work more and to earn more, given that you stand to lose out on significant taxpayer funded subsidies:
“For example, a family earning $33,000 pays no premium at all under Commonwealth Care. But if their pay goes to $46,000, they’re obligated to contribute about $2,400. That’s an effective tax rate of 18.5% on that $13,000 raise.”
As you can tell, Romney’s policy is inherently redistributive, disincentivizing success and placing the overwhelming burden for the newly insured onto other taxpayers while doing little or nothing to leverage market forces to drive competitive costs. As Cato’s Michael Tanner pointed out in that piece: “It’s a situation where the entire escalation in costs is paid by the government, not the people receiving the care.”
But let’s put all that aside, because that’s not really the line that irks me from Romney’s statement. It’s the “nothing’s changed for them” line, which evokes so much of the misplaced optimism on Obama’s part that his national reform wouldn’t change things for the majority of Americans who like their insurance plans. Because things have changed for the 92% of insured people in Massachusetts in the five years since Romney’s reform passed. Namely: everything costs more.
Since Romney’s law went into effect, the cost of Massachusetts premiums have increased dramatically, at a much faster rate than the rest of the country. Today, the health insurance premium cost for the average family in Massachusetts is the highest in the nation. It is double the national average. And yes, that counts as a change.
This gets us back to SCOTUS and the individual mandate. When Romney originally passed his reform, he maintained that it – and the individual mandate within it – would become in time a model for the country. His first line in the 2010 edition of his book on this point was thus consistent with his past remarks of his solutions in Massachusetts becoming the basis for a nationwide approach.
But before I looked into this, I had assumed that – given Romney’s expressed opposition to the federal individual mandate – he would logically support its repeal. This is, surprisingly, not the case. When Romney was asked on his book tour in 2010 about whether he’d repeal the individual mandate, he apparently said “No.” Has he shifted away from this? Has anyone followed up on this point since he officially began his 2012 campaign? It seems like a rather relevant question.
Here’s an interview he gave while on that book tour:
NEWSWEEK: Back in February 2007, you said you hoped the Massachusetts plan would “become a model for the nation.” Would you agree that it has?
ROMNEY: I don’t … You’re going to have to get that quote. That’s not exactly accurate, I don’t believe.
NEWSWEEK: I can tell you exactly what it says: “I’m proud of what we’ve done. If Massachusetts succeeds in implementing it, then that will be a model for the nation.”
ROMNEY: It is a model for the states to be able to learn from. During the campaign, I was asked if I was proposing that what I did in Massachusetts I would do for the nation. And the answer was absolutely not. Our plan is a state plan. It is a model for other states—if you will, the nation—it is a model for them to look at what we’ve accomplished and to better it or to create their own plans.
One wonders what elements of this “model for other states – if you will, the nation” Romney is referring to. Is it the redistribution of costs? Is it the costly subsidies? Is it the skyrocketing premiums? Is it the price controls? Is it the individual mandate?
If the activity of Romney’s campaign is any indication, it seems unlikely that Romney’s view has shifted on any of these points. Just last week, they took time to bash yet another health care study illustrating how his reforms in Massachusetts raised premium costs and cost the state jobs, the second negative study in as many weeks. Rather than laying out Romney’s plan for health reform as president, they give all the indications of still fighting the last war.
In debates, Romney always cites his intention to grant waivers to all the states from Obamacare. That’s fine. But waivers are temporary, and do nothing to solve the long term problems of health care. Romney is essentially using the waivers as a substitute for proposing an actual reform, and should SCOTUS rule against the individual mandate, his utility in name checking waivers will likely dissipate.
What really matters – and this is true of all the Republican candidates – is what he’d do next to fix the system. This issue is currently clouded, but will enter the forefront if Obamacare is gutted or if the individual mandate is maintained. Whether Romney’s plan in Massachusetts is a model for the nation or not, it is all we have to go on when it comes to evaluating his model for reform as president. And his continued defense of his Massachusetts law, including the individual mandate, long past the point where more honest supporters have backed away slowly from its well-evident mistakes, indicates that as much as Romney has shifted over the years across the gamut of policy positions, there is one area where he will not budge: wherever he is on health policy at the moment you ask him a question - he is never wrong.
Thanks Mr. Eric….your untiring efforts are appreciated...
Well, my question to us is , "How can he or we think of him (Romney) as a conservative?" This Health Care law was just one on many left of liberal things he did as governor. This health care gets talked about because the National Heath Care has been a central focus of the current President. IF there is any further interest in Romney's political history just Google - Bills signed into law by Governor Romney…Get you a cup of coffee or any other adult beverage and read till your head and heart are satisfied that you know how Romney would lead this nation IF he should be elected.
For us to replace this current President in November of 2012 we need someone that we and other American can trust, respect, and emotionally attach to like we did with Reagan….Who? Which one? Is there one?
Next article we will take a look at another of our candidates for president.
Ron
docnick37@gmail.com
http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/
Monday, October 17, 2011
Taxes and Job Creations - Reality VS --- ?
The Wall Street Journal ran this article last week. The article sums up the Obama tax scheme better than any publication I have read. The Journal has a lot of really good financial articles on their web site. If you don't read it just 'log on'.
The writer does a great job describing the current 'jobs growth program' our President is in the process of selling to the public. Below is a really clear picture on this NEW Jobs Program. As I was reading the article I found myself wondering,
will there ever be an end to our president's 'spreading the wealth around' with taxing cons…? There are some other clips and history thrown in for good measure.
I hope you will find the article(s) helpful.
WSJ
President Obama unveiled part two of his American Jobs Act on Monday, and it turns out to be another permanent increase in taxes to pay for more spending and another temporary tax cut. No surprise there. What might surprise Americans, however, is how the President is setting up the U.S. economy for one of the biggest tax increases in history in 2013.
Mr. Obama said last week that he wants $240 billion in new tax incentives for workers and small business, but the catch is that all of these tax breaks would expire at the end of next year. To pay for all this, White House budget director Jack Lew also proposed $467 billion in new taxes that would begin a mere 16 months from now. The tax list includes limiting deductions for those earning more than $200,000 ($250,000 for couples), limiting tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and a tax increase on carried interest earned by private equity firms. These tax increases would not be temporary.
What this means is that millions of small-business owners had better enjoy the next 16 months, because come January 2013 they are going to get hit with a giant tax bill. Let's call the expensive roll:
• First comes the new tax hikes that Mr. Obama proposed on Monday. Capping itemized deductions and exemptions for the rich would take $405 billion from the private economy for 10 years starting in 2013. Taxing carried interest would raise $18 billion, and repealing tax incentives for oil and gas production would get $41 billion.
• These increases would coincide with the expiration of the tax credits, 100% expensing provisions and payroll tax breaks in Mr. Obama's new jobs program. This would mean a tax hit of $240 billion on small business and workers. That's the downside of temporary tax breaks and other job-creation gimmicks: The incentives quickly vanish, and perhaps so do the jobs.
So even if the White House is right that its latest stimulus plan will create "millions of jobs" through 2012, by this logic a $240 billion tax hike on small businesses in 2013 would cost the economy jobs. This tax wallop would arrive when even the White House says the unemployment rate will still be 7.4%.
• January 2013 is also the same month that Mr. Obama wants the
Bush-era tax rates to expire on Americans earning more than $200,000. That would raise the highest individual income tax rate to about 42%, including deduction phase-outs, from 35% today. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation found in 2009 that $437 billion of business income would be taxed at higher tax rates under the Obama plan. And since some 4.5 million small-business owners file their annual tax returns as subchapter S firms under the individual tax code, this tax increase would often apply to the same people who Mr. Obama is targeting with his new tax credits.
The capital gains and dividend taxes would also rise to an expected 20% rate from 15% today. The 10-year hit to the private economy for all of these expiring Bush rates: about $750 billion.
• Also starting in 2013 are two of ObamaCare's biggest tax increases: an additional 0.9-percentage point levy on top of the 2.9% Medicare tax for those earning more than $200,000, and a new 2.9% surcharge on investment income, including interest income. This will further increase the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 23.8%, for a roughly 60% increase in investment taxes in one year.
The White House's economic logic seems to be that its new spending and temporary tax cuts will so fire up investment and hiring in the next 16 months that the economy will be growing much faster in 2013 and could thus absorb a leap off the tax cliff. But this requires its own leap of faith.
WSJ Editorial board member Steve Moore on President Obama's plan to pay for temporary tax cuts by hiking income and business taxes over the long haul.
The White House also predicted a similar economic takeoff from the 2009 stimulus that was supposed to make a tax hike possible in 2011. Then last December Mr. Obama proposed new tax incentives only for 2011 because the economy was supposed to be cooking by 2012. Now it wants to extend those tax breaks so the economy will be cruising in 2013.
All of this assumes that American business owners aren't smart enough to look beyond the next few months. They can surely see the new burdens they'll face in 2013, and they aren't about to load up on new employees or take new large risks if they aren't sure what their costs will be in 16 months. They can also reasonably wonder whether Mr. Obama's tax hike will hurt the overall economy in 2013—another reason to be cautious now.
For the White House, the policy calendar is dictated above all by the political necessities of the 2012 election. Mr. Obama will take his chances on 2013 if he can cajole the private economy to create enough new jobs over the next year to win re-election, even if those jobs and growth are temporary. Business owners and workers who would prefer to prosper beyond Election Day aren't likely to share Mr. Obama's enthusiasm once they see the great tax cliff approaching.
WSJ
Our history is always the prelude to whatever we are going to do next….So when we ask or wonder 'What's going to happen next' we should always look back…The trick is to look back far enough to a time that most people living have forgotten.
Here is yet another example of forgotten history:
"I think the analogy between the 1890s and today is better than the analogy with the Great Depression … that we often focus on,” said Hugh Rockoff, a Rutgers University economics professor. “One of the many similarities is the real estate crisis. There was a subprime mortgage problem in the 1890s that was very similar to what precipitated the recent crisis.”
Before 1893’s crisis, many farmers bought homesteads on the Great Plains with short-term “balloon” mortgages supplied by small local mortgage companies and banks. The borrower paid only the interest for five years – until the principal then came due.
Mortgage companies bundled those mortgages and sold them to investors in New York and London.
The bundles supposedly were insured – all very much like the securitization of mortgages that preceded our recent crisis – but they plunged in value, igniting an international banking panic.
“Industrial production fell … and unemployment rose to double-digit levels,” Rockoff recalled. “It took years to work our way out.”
Given the years of recovery from the 1890 crisis and the years of the great depression of the 1930 's you have to wonder with more people, bigger debt, no low end jobs to help out the unemployed, how long will this recovery take? Even if we had some business experience in our leadership? What a mistake we make when we elect people to public office who have never had to 'make' payroll week in and week out.
Just for fun: The platform for the Communist Party in England in 1929 feels familiar in its reading…It's title was Class Against Class…(Nothing ambiguous about this….)
"With talk of class warfare in the air, it’s perhaps useful for the sake of context to re-examine the 1929 platform of the Communist Party of Great Britain, titled “Class Against Class” and representing an avowedly class warfare approach to an economic crisis. Here’s what they had to say on tax policy:
(1) Abolition of all indirect taxes.
(2) Exemption from all kinds of taxation for all wage-earners.
(3) Tax exemption for all working farmers.
(4) Graduated income tax starting with the incomes of £500 per annum, increasing gradually so that all personal incomes over £5,000 per year are confiscated.
(5) Abolition of the right of transfer and inheritance by confiscation of all individual fortunes over £1,000.
(6) Repudiation of the National Debt (special consideration to be given to the position of small investors, the Cooperatives, and trade unions).
This is strikingly different from a modern progressive agenda. In the CPGB’s framework, the source of income is all-important. Gilbert Arenas is a “wage-earner” and thus should be exempt from all taxation, but a successful small businessman would see his income capped at about £200,000 in today’s money.
This wasn’t a big concern for the CPGB because they were also proposing to “nationalize the banks, the land, the mines, the railways, land and sea transport, electrical industries, broadcasting stations, engineering and shipbuilding industries, post and telegraph, chemical, cotton and woolen textile industries, flour milling, boot and shoe industries and building materials, all of which are ripe for running as national industries, untidily owned and controlled by the workers.”
(Wonder why they didn't want to nationalize their auto industry? They may have overlooked it.)
In 1929 these were still fairly new ideas. Almost a hundred years later, dressed up in a different suit, watered down slightly, these ideas have resurfaced. Minority groups against the majority groups, young against old, poor against rich, workers against business, and liberals against conservatives. Our President spends his day campaigning for his reelection. In every speech he searches for ways to divide the citizens of the nation.
Let's not look so far back..How about the housing crisis in the seventies and the collapse of the saving and loan industry….There were about five hundred or so savings and loans banks that went under and the ones left were absorbed by other banks. Most loans were to marginal home buyers. This was part of the purpose and mission of the savings and loans business as government charted it.. Down turn, people lost jobs, couldn't pay mortgages, and in most parts of the country homes lost 40/50% of their value. It took six to eight years to work our way out. This was less than thirty years ago. You would think we would have remembered this crisis.
The worse question might be, with this level of spending along with the projected debt growth over the next decade can we work our way out this time? It seems that if we continue this irresponsible spending behavior by our government there will be a time of reckoning that can't simply be worked out. (Look where Europe has gotten to….can we be far behind?)
When we don't teach history, or worse know history and dismiss it, the price to us and the generation that follow simply gets worse as the population grows. A really good example would be all the young people who supported Obama in his election seem to have no idea they would be the ones who will work to pay the debt he is creating for most of their work life. They seem to have no idea of debt in general and certainly no idea of what 'interest on the debt' means but enamored of the idea of 'spreading the wealth' around. (I would like to say, "heaven help us" but I am embarrassed to ask Him.)
It would seem the educating these young voters through their college newspapers and other social media tools as to what these debts our congress/president are creating and the impact it will have on their lives would be a good thing to do. We have a number of colleges in Mississippi and all that have newspapers created by students. ?????
When and if jobs are created they will be created by young small business and mostly started by young men and women. They will not be created by congress, the President, our Aunt Tilley…Few, if any jobs, will be for manual workers. Our core chronic unemployed will become more unemployable.
How many people are left (who aren't on the left) still believe that Obama's goal is to do what is necessary to create jobs? How many people believe that Obama believes in a government for and by the people and that governments governs at the consent of the people?
Mr. President, in fifty eight weeks the people are taking you and a whole bunch of your supporters to the woodshed.
Ron
docnick37@gmail.com
http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/
The writer does a great job describing the current 'jobs growth program' our President is in the process of selling to the public. Below is a really clear picture on this NEW Jobs Program. As I was reading the article I found myself wondering,
will there ever be an end to our president's 'spreading the wealth around' with taxing cons…? There are some other clips and history thrown in for good measure.
I hope you will find the article(s) helpful.
WSJ
President Obama unveiled part two of his American Jobs Act on Monday, and it turns out to be another permanent increase in taxes to pay for more spending and another temporary tax cut. No surprise there. What might surprise Americans, however, is how the President is setting up the U.S. economy for one of the biggest tax increases in history in 2013.
Mr. Obama said last week that he wants $240 billion in new tax incentives for workers and small business, but the catch is that all of these tax breaks would expire at the end of next year. To pay for all this, White House budget director Jack Lew also proposed $467 billion in new taxes that would begin a mere 16 months from now. The tax list includes limiting deductions for those earning more than $200,000 ($250,000 for couples), limiting tax breaks for oil and gas companies, and a tax increase on carried interest earned by private equity firms. These tax increases would not be temporary.
What this means is that millions of small-business owners had better enjoy the next 16 months, because come January 2013 they are going to get hit with a giant tax bill. Let's call the expensive roll:
• First comes the new tax hikes that Mr. Obama proposed on Monday. Capping itemized deductions and exemptions for the rich would take $405 billion from the private economy for 10 years starting in 2013. Taxing carried interest would raise $18 billion, and repealing tax incentives for oil and gas production would get $41 billion.
• These increases would coincide with the expiration of the tax credits, 100% expensing provisions and payroll tax breaks in Mr. Obama's new jobs program. This would mean a tax hit of $240 billion on small business and workers. That's the downside of temporary tax breaks and other job-creation gimmicks: The incentives quickly vanish, and perhaps so do the jobs.
So even if the White House is right that its latest stimulus plan will create "millions of jobs" through 2012, by this logic a $240 billion tax hike on small businesses in 2013 would cost the economy jobs. This tax wallop would arrive when even the White House says the unemployment rate will still be 7.4%.
• January 2013 is also the same month that Mr. Obama wants the
Bush-era tax rates to expire on Americans earning more than $200,000. That would raise the highest individual income tax rate to about 42%, including deduction phase-outs, from 35% today. Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation found in 2009 that $437 billion of business income would be taxed at higher tax rates under the Obama plan. And since some 4.5 million small-business owners file their annual tax returns as subchapter S firms under the individual tax code, this tax increase would often apply to the same people who Mr. Obama is targeting with his new tax credits.
The capital gains and dividend taxes would also rise to an expected 20% rate from 15% today. The 10-year hit to the private economy for all of these expiring Bush rates: about $750 billion.
• Also starting in 2013 are two of ObamaCare's biggest tax increases: an additional 0.9-percentage point levy on top of the 2.9% Medicare tax for those earning more than $200,000, and a new 2.9% surcharge on investment income, including interest income. This will further increase the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends to 23.8%, for a roughly 60% increase in investment taxes in one year.
The White House's economic logic seems to be that its new spending and temporary tax cuts will so fire up investment and hiring in the next 16 months that the economy will be growing much faster in 2013 and could thus absorb a leap off the tax cliff. But this requires its own leap of faith.
WSJ Editorial board member Steve Moore on President Obama's plan to pay for temporary tax cuts by hiking income and business taxes over the long haul.
The White House also predicted a similar economic takeoff from the 2009 stimulus that was supposed to make a tax hike possible in 2011. Then last December Mr. Obama proposed new tax incentives only for 2011 because the economy was supposed to be cooking by 2012. Now it wants to extend those tax breaks so the economy will be cruising in 2013.
All of this assumes that American business owners aren't smart enough to look beyond the next few months. They can surely see the new burdens they'll face in 2013, and they aren't about to load up on new employees or take new large risks if they aren't sure what their costs will be in 16 months. They can also reasonably wonder whether Mr. Obama's tax hike will hurt the overall economy in 2013—another reason to be cautious now.
For the White House, the policy calendar is dictated above all by the political necessities of the 2012 election. Mr. Obama will take his chances on 2013 if he can cajole the private economy to create enough new jobs over the next year to win re-election, even if those jobs and growth are temporary. Business owners and workers who would prefer to prosper beyond Election Day aren't likely to share Mr. Obama's enthusiasm once they see the great tax cliff approaching.
WSJ
Our history is always the prelude to whatever we are going to do next….So when we ask or wonder 'What's going to happen next' we should always look back…The trick is to look back far enough to a time that most people living have forgotten.
Here is yet another example of forgotten history:
"I think the analogy between the 1890s and today is better than the analogy with the Great Depression … that we often focus on,” said Hugh Rockoff, a Rutgers University economics professor. “One of the many similarities is the real estate crisis. There was a subprime mortgage problem in the 1890s that was very similar to what precipitated the recent crisis.”
Before 1893’s crisis, many farmers bought homesteads on the Great Plains with short-term “balloon” mortgages supplied by small local mortgage companies and banks. The borrower paid only the interest for five years – until the principal then came due.
Mortgage companies bundled those mortgages and sold them to investors in New York and London.
The bundles supposedly were insured – all very much like the securitization of mortgages that preceded our recent crisis – but they plunged in value, igniting an international banking panic.
“Industrial production fell … and unemployment rose to double-digit levels,” Rockoff recalled. “It took years to work our way out.”
Given the years of recovery from the 1890 crisis and the years of the great depression of the 1930 's you have to wonder with more people, bigger debt, no low end jobs to help out the unemployed, how long will this recovery take? Even if we had some business experience in our leadership? What a mistake we make when we elect people to public office who have never had to 'make' payroll week in and week out.
Just for fun: The platform for the Communist Party in England in 1929 feels familiar in its reading…It's title was Class Against Class…(Nothing ambiguous about this….)
"With talk of class warfare in the air, it’s perhaps useful for the sake of context to re-examine the 1929 platform of the Communist Party of Great Britain, titled “Class Against Class” and representing an avowedly class warfare approach to an economic crisis. Here’s what they had to say on tax policy:
(1) Abolition of all indirect taxes.
(2) Exemption from all kinds of taxation for all wage-earners.
(3) Tax exemption for all working farmers.
(4) Graduated income tax starting with the incomes of £500 per annum, increasing gradually so that all personal incomes over £5,000 per year are confiscated.
(5) Abolition of the right of transfer and inheritance by confiscation of all individual fortunes over £1,000.
(6) Repudiation of the National Debt (special consideration to be given to the position of small investors, the Cooperatives, and trade unions).
This is strikingly different from a modern progressive agenda. In the CPGB’s framework, the source of income is all-important. Gilbert Arenas is a “wage-earner” and thus should be exempt from all taxation, but a successful small businessman would see his income capped at about £200,000 in today’s money.
This wasn’t a big concern for the CPGB because they were also proposing to “nationalize the banks, the land, the mines, the railways, land and sea transport, electrical industries, broadcasting stations, engineering and shipbuilding industries, post and telegraph, chemical, cotton and woolen textile industries, flour milling, boot and shoe industries and building materials, all of which are ripe for running as national industries, untidily owned and controlled by the workers.”
(Wonder why they didn't want to nationalize their auto industry? They may have overlooked it.)
In 1929 these were still fairly new ideas. Almost a hundred years later, dressed up in a different suit, watered down slightly, these ideas have resurfaced. Minority groups against the majority groups, young against old, poor against rich, workers against business, and liberals against conservatives. Our President spends his day campaigning for his reelection. In every speech he searches for ways to divide the citizens of the nation.
Let's not look so far back..How about the housing crisis in the seventies and the collapse of the saving and loan industry….There were about five hundred or so savings and loans banks that went under and the ones left were absorbed by other banks. Most loans were to marginal home buyers. This was part of the purpose and mission of the savings and loans business as government charted it.. Down turn, people lost jobs, couldn't pay mortgages, and in most parts of the country homes lost 40/50% of their value. It took six to eight years to work our way out. This was less than thirty years ago. You would think we would have remembered this crisis.
The worse question might be, with this level of spending along with the projected debt growth over the next decade can we work our way out this time? It seems that if we continue this irresponsible spending behavior by our government there will be a time of reckoning that can't simply be worked out. (Look where Europe has gotten to….can we be far behind?)
When we don't teach history, or worse know history and dismiss it, the price to us and the generation that follow simply gets worse as the population grows. A really good example would be all the young people who supported Obama in his election seem to have no idea they would be the ones who will work to pay the debt he is creating for most of their work life. They seem to have no idea of debt in general and certainly no idea of what 'interest on the debt' means but enamored of the idea of 'spreading the wealth' around. (I would like to say, "heaven help us" but I am embarrassed to ask Him.)
It would seem the educating these young voters through their college newspapers and other social media tools as to what these debts our congress/president are creating and the impact it will have on their lives would be a good thing to do. We have a number of colleges in Mississippi and all that have newspapers created by students. ?????
When and if jobs are created they will be created by young small business and mostly started by young men and women. They will not be created by congress, the President, our Aunt Tilley…Few, if any jobs, will be for manual workers. Our core chronic unemployed will become more unemployable.
How many people are left (who aren't on the left) still believe that Obama's goal is to do what is necessary to create jobs? How many people believe that Obama believes in a government for and by the people and that governments governs at the consent of the people?
Mr. President, in fifty eight weeks the people are taking you and a whole bunch of your supporters to the woodshed.
Ron
docnick37@gmail.com
http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/
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