Backdoor Taxes to Hit Middle Class

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100201/us/usreport_us_budget_backdoortaxes

The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.
The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 -- though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner.

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a "patch" that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.

Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year's levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy -- the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.

Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:

• Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;
• The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;
• The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;
• Individuals who don't itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;
• The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free.
  

Palin Wants Rahm Fired

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2010/02/02/palin_wants_rahm_fired.html

In a Facebook post, Sarah Palin calls on President Obama to fire Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel for reportedly describing the strategy of Senate liberals as "f$&%*$&# retarded."

"Yes, Rahm is known for his caustic, crude references about those with whom he disagrees, but his recent tirade against participants in a strategy session was such a strong slap in many American faces that our president is doing himself a disservice by seeming to condone Rahm's recent sick and offensive tactic."

Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky on Organizing for America's Recommended Reading List

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/01/atlas-exclusive-obama-organizing-for-communism-and-youth-corps-in-the-public-school-1.html

Her government class passed out this propaganda recruiting paper so students could sign up as interns for Obama's Organizing for America (OFA is the former mybarackobama.com site.)
Obama is using our public school system to recruit for his Alinsky-inspired private army. Organizing for America is (and I quote) recruiting in our high schools to "build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda" ............of national socialism.

Check out the recommended reading list page 4:

• Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky
• The New Organizers, Zack Exley
• Stir It Up: Lessons from Community Organizing and Advocacy, Rinku Sen
• Obama Field Organizers Plot a Miracle, Zack Exley, Huffington Post
• Dreams of My Father Chicago Chapters, Barack Hussein Obama

State Department Admits No-Bid Contract 'Violates' Obama Campaign Pledges

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/31/state-department-admits-bid-contract-violates-obama-campaign-pledges/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Flatest+%28Text+-+Latest+Headlines%29

The recent awarding of a lucrative federal contract to a company owned by a financial contributor to the Obama presidential campaign -- without competitive bidding -- "violated" President Obama's many campaign pledges to crack down on the practice, a top State Department official told Fox News.

The contract in question, worth more than $24.6 million, was awarded on Jan. 4 by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to Checchi and Company Consulting, a Washington, D.C.-based firm owned by economist and Democratic Party donor Vincent Checchi. The deal called for Checchi's firm to train lawyers and judges in Afghanistan and thereby strengthen the "rule of law" in the war-torn country.

Crowley confirmed that the contract has been "terminated" because the circumstances under which it was awarded “violated the Competition in Contracting Act." Crowley said the contract was actually a renewal of a $44 million contract first awarded to Checchi and Company in October 2004 by the Bush administration -- after a competitive bidding process -- and will now be put out for competitive bids.

Obama Plan Has $79 Billion From Cap-and-Trade in 2012

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=aAO_KEIgeOOc

President Barack Obama’s budget plan assumes $78.7 billion in revenue in 2012 from the sale of greenhouse-gas emission permits to polluters, putting pressure on Congress to pass legislation by early next year.

A “cap-and-trade” program would generate a total of $645.7 billion by 2019, according to the budget blueprint Obama sent to Congress today. Initial funds would be used to invest in “clean” energy, help finance Obama’s tax credit for workers as well as offset higher energy costs for low- and middle-income people and clean up costs for small businesses.

The budget calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to get $19 million to begin setting up an inventory of greenhouse- gas emissions that most scientists say are causing rising temperatures and sea levels. Obama has asked Congress to send him a bill that would create an emissions trading system, putting a mandatory cap on carbon-dioxide pollution nationwide for the first time in the U.S.

IPCC Based Claims on Student Dissertation and Magazine Article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7111525/UN-climate-change-panel-based-claims-on-student-dissertation-and-magazine-article.html

However, it can be revealed that one of the sources quoted was a feature article published in a popular magazine for climbers which was based on anecdotal evidence from mountaineers about the changes they were witnessing on the mountainsides around them.

The other was a dissertation written by a geography student, studying for the equivalent of a master's degree, at the University of Berne in Switzerland that quoted interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.

The revelations, uncovered by The Sunday Telegraph, have raised fresh questions about the quality of the information contained in the report, which was published in 2007.

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."

--Thomas Jefferson

Fannie, Freddie Bonuses Total About $210 Million

April 4, 2009:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123876318076986497.html

In a compensation program that has drawn angry protests from lawmakers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expect to pay about $210 million in retention bonuses to 7,600 employees over 18 months, according to a letter from the mortgage companies' regulator.

The maximum retention bonus for any individual executive under the plan will total $1.5 million during the 18 months ending in early 2010, according to the letter to Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, which provides previously undisclosed details about the bonuses.

January 14, 2010:
http://whitehouse.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/01/14/obama-to-propose-90-billion-in-fees-over-ten-years-on-high-flying-us-banks-aig-on-subsidiaries-of-foreign-firms/
Significantly, the administration will exempt GM, Chrsyler, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the fees even though most of the current TARP deficit is linked to taxpayer bailouts of these firms.

Russia's Newly Unveiled Sukhoi T-50 Stealth Fighter Jet to Rival United States'

http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/world/2010/01/29/russias-sukhoi-t-challenges-jet?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Flatest+%28Text+-+Latest+Headlines%29

Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources

http://www.juandemariana.org/pdf/090327-employment-public-aid-renewable.pdf

The following are key points from the study:

1. As President Obama correctly remarked, Spain provides a reference for the establishment of government aid to renewable energy. No other country has given such broad support to the construction and production of electricity through renewable sources. The arguments for Spain’s and Europe’s “green jobs” schemes are the same arguments now made in the U.S., principally that massive public support would produce large numbers of green jobs. The question that this paper answers is “at what price?”
2. Optimistically treating European Commission partially funded data1, we find that for every renewable energy job that the State manages to finance, Spain’s experience cited by President Obama as a model reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created.
3. Therefore, while it is not possible to directly translate Spain’s experience with exactitude to claim that the U.S. would lose at least 6.6 million to 11 million jobs, as a direct consequence were it to actually create 3 to 5 million “green jobs” as promised (in addition to the jobs lost due to the opportunity cost of private capital employed in renewable energy), the study clearly reveals the tendency that the U.S. should expect such an outcome.
4. At minimum, therefore, the study’s evaluation of the Spanish model cited as one for the U.S. to replicate in quick pursuit of “green jobs” serves a note of caution, that the reality is far from what has typically been presented, and that such schemes also offer considerable employment consequences and implications for emerging from the conomic crisis.
5. Despite its hyper-aggressive (expensive and extensive) “green jobs” policies it appears that Spain likely has created a surprisingly low number of jobs, two-thirds of which came in construction, fabrication and installation, one quarter in administrative positions, marketing and projects engineering, and just one out of ten jobs has been created at the more permanent level of actual operation and maintenance of the renewable sources of electricity. This came at great financial cost as well as cost in terms of jobs destroyed
   elsewhere in the economy.
6. The study calculates that since 2000 Spain spent €571,138 to create each “green job”, including subsidies of more than €1 million per wind industry job. The study calculates that the programs creating those jobs also resulted in the destruction of nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy, or 2.2 jobs destroyed for every “green job” created.
7. Principally, the high cost of electricity affects costs of production and employment levels in metallurgy, non-metallic mining and food processing, beverage and tobacco industries.
8. Each “green” megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs on average elsewhere in the economy: 8.99 by photovoltaics, 4.27 by wind energy, 5.05 by mini-hydro.
9. These costs do not appear to be unique to Spain’s approach but instead are largely inherent in schemes to promote renewable energy sources.
10. The total over-cost – the amount paid over the cost that would result from buying the electricity generated by the renewable power plants at the market price - that has been incurred from 2000 to 2008 (adjusting by 4% and calculating its net present value [NPV] in 2008), amounts to 7,918.54 million Euros (appx. $10 billion USD)
11. The total subsidy spent and committed (NPV adjusted by 4%) to these three renewable sources amounts to 28,671 million euros ($36 billion USD).
12. The price of a comprehensive electricity rate (paid by the end consumer) in
    Spain would have to be increased 31% to being able to repay the historic debt
    generated by this rate deficit mainly produced by the subsidies to renewables, according to Spain’s energy regulator.
13. Spanish citizens must therefore cope with either an increase of electricity rates or increased taxes (and public deficit), as will the U.S. if it follows Spain’s model.
14. The high cost of electricity due to the green job policy tends to drive the relatively most electricity-intensive companies and industries away, seeking areas where costs are lower. The example of Acerinox is just such a case.
15. The study offers a caution against a certain form of green energy mandate. Minimum guaranteed prices generate surpluses that are difficult to manage. In Spain’s case, the minimum electricity prices for renewable-generated electricity, far above market prices, wasted a vast amount of capital that could have been otherwise economically allocated in other sectors. Arbitrary, state-established price systems inherent in “green energy” schemes leave the subsidized renewable industry hanging by a very weak thread and, it appears, doomed to dramatic adjustments that will include massive unemployment, loss of capital, dismantlement of productive facilities and perpetuation of inefficient ones.
16. These schemes create serious “bubble” potential, as Spain is now discovering. The most paradigmatic bubble case can be found in the photovoltaic industry. Even with subsidy schemes leaving the mean sale price of electricity generated from solar photovoltaic power 7 times higher than the mean price of the pool, solar failed even to reach 1% of Spain’s total electricity production in 2008.
17. The energy future has been jeopardized by the current state of wind or photovoltaic technology (more expensive and less efficient than conventional energy sources). These policies will leave Spain saddled with and further artificially perpetuating obsolete fixed assets, far less productive than cuttingedge technologies, the soaring rates for which soon-to-be obsolete assets the government has committed to maintain at high levels during their lifetime.
18. The regulator should consider whether citizens and companies need expensive and inefficient energy – a factor of production usable in virtually every human project- or affordable energy to help overcome the economic crisis instead.
19. The Spanish system also jeopardizes conventional electricity facilities, which are the first to deal with the electricity tariff deficit that the State owes them.
20. Renewable technologies remained the beneficiaries of new credit while others began to struggle, though this was solely due to subsidies, mandates and related programs. As soon as subsequent programmatic changes take effect which became necessary due to unsustainable” solar growth its credit will also cease.
21. This proves that the only way for the “renewables” sector - which was never feasible by itself on the basis of consumer demand - to be “countercyclical” in crisis periods is also via government subsidies. These schemes create a bubble, Study about the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources which is boosted as soon as investors find in “renewables” one of the few profitable sectors while when fleeing other investments. Yet it is axiomatic, as we are seeing now, that when crisis arises, the Government cannot afford this growing subsidy cost either, and finally must penalize the artificial renewable industries which then face collapse.
22. Renewables consume enormous taxpayer resources. In Spain, the average annuity payable to renewables is equivalent to 4.35% of all VAT collected, 3.45% of the household income tax, or 5.6% of the corporate income tax for 2007.

Obama Gets 'F' on Stopping Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/25/obama-gets-f-stopping-spread-weapons-mass-destruction/

In a 19-page report card being published Tuesday, the bipartisan Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism gives the Obama administration an "F" for failing to take key steps the commission outlined just over a year ago in its initial report.

Specifically, the commission concludes that the Obama administration, like the three administrations before it, has failed to pay consistent and urgent attention to increasing the nation's ability to respond quickly and effectively to a germ attack that would inflict massive casualties on the nation.

The commission repeated its warning that unless nations acted decisively and urgently, it was more likely than not that a WMD will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013, and that the terrorists' weapon of choice would be biological, rather than nuclear.

Alito Winces as Obama Slams Supreme Court Ruling

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/01/28/crossroads/entry6149295.shtml

Obama's frontal assault on the Supreme Court in a State of the Union is almost unheard of for a President. Typically, Presidents who get bad Supreme Court rulings (and they've all gotten their share) grimace and bear it, taking the position that the "court has spoken." I don't ever remember a Democratic president, in a State of the Union address, take on the Supreme Court for a recent decision and dare Congress to overturn it.

Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad: Anti-Abortion Commercial to Air

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/tim-tebow-super-bowl-ad-cbs-air-controversial/story?id=9667638

Doctors advised her to abort the fetus. Pam ignored their advice and gave birth on Aug. 14, 1987, to a baby boy. That boy was Tim Tebow.

White House Considers Changing Venue of Terror Trial

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703389004575033000474040096.html?mod=rss_Politics_And_Policy

The Obama administration appears to be backing away from the plan to try the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York City.

The White House's revised stance comes amid calls from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others that the trial should be moved out of Manhattan due to security costs, traffic delays and fears of new attacks.

Economy Grows at 5.7% Pace, Fastest Since 2003

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Economy-likely-grew-faster-in-apf-3028347842.html?x=0&.v=9

The economy's faster-than-expected growth at the end of last year, fueled by companies boosting output to keep stockpiles up, is likely to weaken as consumers keep a lid on spending.

Still, economists expect growth to slow this year as companies finish restocking inventories and as government stimulus efforts fade. Many estimate the nation's gross domestic product will grow 2.5 percent to 3 percent in the current quarter and about 2.5 percent or less for the full year.

That won't be fast enough to significantly reduce the unemployment rate, now 10 percent. Most analysts expect the rate to keep rising for several months and remain close to 10 percent through the end of the year.

Heritage Responds To The State Of The Union

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/27/reaction-roundup-heritage-responds-to-the-state-of-the-union/

Forty Years of Feminism Now Bearing Fruit

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/forty_years_of_feminism_now_be.html

A new documentary, Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss, chronicles America's moral decay. Sharlene Azam, a Canadian filmmaker, says, "If you talk to teens [about oral sex], they'll tell you it's not a big deal. In fact, they don't consider it sex. They don't consider a lot of things sex." In the documentary, teenage girls talk casually about their sexual experiences and even their forays into prostitution.

This is the bitter fruit of forty years of feminist domination in the United States.
Virtue, self-worth, and man's moral value are DOA in the age of the cultural domination of the left. What an awful stench this decaying corpse gives off, lying in a smoldering, fetid pile of ash.

This is how the phony feminist movement empowered women? Girls selling the it for a handbag? Those men-hating parasites have ruined the glorious exaltation of women in 20th-century America.

To say that feminism was one of the worst things to happen to women is being easy. It has been worse for men. The demon seeds of the "liberation" movement are everywhere -- including the epidemic of single motherhood, the breakdown of the American family, the street vernacular of "bitches and hos," the emasculation of men, and the bone-crushing responsibility of single moms acting as mother, father, breadwinner, chief cook, and bottle-washer.

And what has Obama done about all this? He has appointed Kevin Jennings, the founder of GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network), to be his Safe Schools Czar. GLSEN is notorious for having sponsored a conference at Tufts University at which teenagers were given instruction in an array of risky and dangerous sexual practices. Obama has appointed this radical to head up America's "safe schools," but who is going to keep kids safe from him? This is another terrible Obama choice. Whatever one's sexual preferences or proclivities may be, do not traumatize children. Why can't the schools just teach reading, writing, arithmetic -- and civics?

Congress Went to Denmark, You Got the Bill

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/01/25/cbsnews_investigates/main6140406.shtml

For 15 Democratic and 6 Republican Congressmen, food and rooms for two nights cost $4,406 tax dollars each. That's $2,200 a day - more than most Americans spend on their monthly mortgage payment.

Total hotel, meeting rooms and "a couple" of $1,000-a-night hospitality suites topped $400,000.

Flights weren't cheap, either. Fifty-nine House and Senate staff flew commercial during the Copenhagen rush. They paid government rates -- $5-10,000 each -- totaling $408,064. Add three military jets -- $168,351 just for flight time -- and the bill tops $1.1 million dollars -- not including all the Obama administration officials who attended: well over 60.

The President's Bank Reforms Don't Add Up

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704509704575019333516533828.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

First, Mr. Obama has proposed to limit the size of banks or their holding companies, or both. The trouble with limiting the size of these institutions is that no one has the faintest idea what the right size is.


The Glass-Steagall Act, despite what we constantly hear in the media and from people who should know better, still applies to banks; it forbids them from engaging in underwriting or dealing in securities. This should prohibit them from engaging in proprietary trading to the extent that this is dealing in securities. Bank holding companies, however, because they are not banks and not government-backed, can engage in any financial activity, including securities dealing. Why would we prohibit them from doing so when they are using their own funds?

Real-estate loans rose to 55% of all bank loans in 2008 from less than 25% in 1965. These loans will continue to rise in the future, because only real-estate, small business and consumer lending are now accessible activities for banks.

This is not a good trend, because the real-estate sector is highly cyclical and volatile. It was, indeed, the vast number of subprime and other risky mortgages in our financial system that caused the weakness of the banks and the financial crisis. Requiring banks to continue to lend to real estate, because they have few other alternatives, virtually guarantees another banking crisis in the future.

NH's Carol Shea Porter: Could Pass Healthcare if Send Men Home

http://www.nowhampshire.com/2010/01/23/shea-porter-send-the-men-home-and-congress-could-pass-health-care-reform/