Bernie Sanders wants universal health care and a number of other programs that are politically aligned with his democratic socialist ideology and he’s going to pay for them by raising taxes.
The Washington Examiner conducted an analysis and found that Sanders’ plans will mean approximately $19.6 trillion in new taxes over the next decade.
Sanders, the Examiner found, will raise taxes by 47 percent over the current levels. Continue reading
(CNSNews.com) - The federal government took in a record of approximately $3,248,723,000,000 in taxes in fiscal 2015 (which ended on Sept. 30), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today.
That equaled approximately $21,833 for every person in the country who had either a full-time or part-time job in September.
The world will soon be facing a tsunami of defaults on bad debts. This will include municipal or local government defaults such as the one now occurring in Stockton California, governments “defaulting” on promises they’ve made to the people (Social Security, Medicaid), a default on the social contract between society and politicians such as the one in Cyprus (a default on the notions of private property and Democracy), stealth defaults on debts in the form of inflation and finally, of course, outright sovereign defaults.
However, the last option will be sovereign defaults; all other options will be tried first. The reason for this is that sovereign bonds are the senior most collateral posted by the banks for their hundreds of trillions of Dollars worth of derivatives bets.
The minute an actual sovereign default occurs in Europe, Asia or the US, then the large global banks will all be vaporized. End of story. As is now clear, the Central banks do not care about ordinary citizens. They only care about propping up the big banks.
This is why Cyprus decided to default on the social contract with its people and steal their funds rather than simply instigating a formal default. And it’s why in general we’re going to see Governments implementing more and more theft in the form of “taxes” (Cyprus called its theft a tax) in the future.
This will be sold to the public as either an attempt to tax those with a lot of money because it’s only fair that they put in more to bailout the nation OR as a form of financial terrorism e.g. “either you take a 7% cut on your deposits and the bank stays afloat or the bank crashes and you lose everything.”
This will be spreading throughout the world, GUARANTEED.
Spain, Canada (which allegedly has the safest banks in the world), and New Zealand have already begun discussing confiscation schemes for depositors in the event of a banking crisis.
As Cyprus has shown us, when push comes to shove, rule of law goes out the window. I fully expect that when things get really bad in the financial system the money grabs will come fast and furious. Foreign accounts, including possibly even Gold held aboard, will come under attack. Heck, the US got Switzerland to throw its 300-year-old banking secrecy out the window…
Yesterday we reported that Wesley Snipes was finally released from prisonafter serving a 3 year sentence for refusing to pay the government extortion racket known as “taxation”. If you had a difficult time seeing through the scam of taxation with that story, hopefully this one can show you how taxation is blatant theft and thuggery.
10 Maryland counties, including the one that I live in will now be taxing people for how much rain falls on their property. How much area is paved on their property, and how big their deck is will be primary factors in this new taxation scheme.
According to a local newspaper:
In 2010 the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency ordered Maryland to reduce stormwater runoff into the Chesapeake Bay so that nitrogen levels fall 22 percent and phosphorus falls 15 percent from current amounts. The price tag: $14.8 billion.
And where do we get the $14.8 billion? By taxing so-called “impervious surfaces,” anything that prevents rain water from seeping into the earth (roofs, driveways, patios, sidewalks, etc.) thereby causing stormwater run off. In other words, a rain tax.And who levies this new rain tax? Witness how taxation, like rain, trickles down through the various pervious levels of government until it reaches the impervious level — me and you.
The EPA ordered Maryland to raise the money (an unfunded mandate), Maryland ordered its 10 largest counties to raise the money (another unfunded mandate) and, now, each of those counties is putting a local rain tax in place by July 1. So, if you live in Montgomery, Prince George’s, Howard, Anne Arundel, Carroll, Harford, Charles, Frederick, Baltimore counties or Baltimore city, you’ll be paying a rain tax on your next property tax bill.
The article goes on to explain the government will survey peoples property using drones and satellite imagery.
Homeowners will bear the brunt of the rain tax: of the $14.8 billion to be raised — $482 million each year until 2025 — about three-quarters will come from residential property owners. The rate is expected to start at $100 a year for most homeowners, although that could rise. The only rain tax shelter: credits and exemptions for property owners who follow stormwater “best practices.” How the money will be spent is another murky situation.
As i reported last week, while the government uses the EPA to tax drivers and regulate how people are landscaping in their back yards, that same government has uncontrollable biological weapons sitting all over the country like toxic time bombs.
Most specifically, the area in question, the Chesapeake bay is terribly polluted with toxic chemical, biological and radioactive waste that was released from the Lockheed Martin facility in Middle River MD, and the Aberdeen Proving Grounds military base in Aberdeen MD, since around the time of World War 2. Both of these facilities have unleashed a stew of toxic waste into rivers that lead directly into the bay, even going as far as storing radio active waste under the seabed for decades. I will be doing a full series of reports on these toxic waste sites in the coming weeks and months, stay tuned to intellihub.com for more information.
Nearly a quarter of those due to be affected by the so-called “spare bedroom tax” will be single parents, according to new research.
Government figures show that 150,000 of the 660,000 people expected to have their benefits reduced because they have at least one unused room are lone parents under 60, Labour claim.
The average amount taken from each person per week is £13, which amounts to £676 a year, according to the party’s analysis.
The claim comes amid new concerns that disabled people will also be disproportionately affected by the change in benefit rules, due to be introduced in April.
New rules state that housing benefit and universal credit claimants deemed to have one unused bedroom in their council or housing association home will lose 14% of their housing benefit and those with two or more will lose 25%.
The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that 660,000 people living in social housing will lose an average of £728 per year as a result of the change.
Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne said: “David Cameron promised to stand up for parents, but his bedroom tax is a £100m tax bombshell for single mums and dads.
“The bedroom tax has now been exposed as a chaotic disaster, but it’s not too late for the prime minister to do the decent thing, admit he has got this wrong and think again.”
The planned changes will also affect hundreds of thousands of disabled people, according to the National Housing Federation.
A fund to help people eligible for disability living allowance was given a £30m boost this year by Cameron. But an analysis of figures by the federation claims that this will leave a £100m shortfall which will have to be made up by claimants.
David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, said: “The bedroom tax is ill-thought and unfair as thousands of disabled people will have no choice but to cut back further on food and other expenses in order to stay in their own homes.”
(DailyTech) -This amount is strictly for the September-December 2012 quarter
Some U.S. states — like California — are starting to see new revenue from sales tax on internet purchases from the likes of Amazon.
The California Board of Equalization said it made $96.4 million in sales tax on internet commerce from September-December 2012, which is the first full quarter that the state started collecting. This is good news for the California Department of Finance, which has a forecast budget goal of $107 million in new e-taxes for the fiscal year starting July 1, 2012.
While these numbers look great for the state of California, they’re a bit off from the estimates provided by a 2009 University of Tennessee study that said California would make $1.9 billion in 2012 revenue if it collected online sales tax. It also said states would miss out on $11.4 billion in 2012 revenue nationwide if they failed to collect online sales tax.
As of right now, Amazon collects sales tax in nine states (including California) and will collect in seven more over the next year.
Georgia is one the most recent to collect online sales tax. Amazon started collecting sales tax in Texas in July 2012, and California and Pennsylvania in September 2012.
Amazon has been fighting states that force it to collect sales tax for years (except in Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota and Washington). The e-tailer fled many states that attempted to force tax collection on the company, such as California and Illinois. But between states looking for ways to offset large financial deficits and brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy complaining about Amazon being unfair competition, the issue swelled.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said many times that his company would agree to collect taxes if there were some sort of federal legislation.
But eventually, Amazon finally broke down and started collecting sales tax in certain states, which allowed it to build more distribution centers within those states. For instance, Amazon announced that it would collect sales tax in New Jersey last May so that two Amazon distribution centers could be built. This led to faster shipping for customers, such as Amazon’s same-day delivery program, making it more competitive than ever.
But earlier this month, Amazon and Overstock.com challenged a New York law passed in 2008, which forces companies with affiliates within the state to collect sales tax. However, Amazon said this law is unconstitutional because a 1992 Supreme Court decision said retailers that don’t have a nexus of operation in a state does not need to collect sales tax. While New York said that websites with purchase buttons for Amazon as well as other national retailers are local solicitors because they receive fees for doing so, Amazon said argued that web referrals are less like solicitors or a local sales force and are more like advertising.
(America Blog) -Chris has gone on at length about the corporate “welfare queens” on Wall Street and the right (they’re almost always Republican) who took billions in federal bail out money in late 2008 and early 2009, and now turn around and tell the rest of us that we need to tighten our belts by cutting Medicare and Social Security, and increasing the age of eligibility for each program.
Just like the Republican wars, there’s always money to be found when corporations need a bailout. But when American citizens need the support of their government, such as when they reach 65 and (hopefully) are able to retire, suddenly the money’s all gone (until the next war).
Citigroup is a perfect example. Remember how shortly after the bailout Citi wanted to raise salaries as the entire country was losing jobs? And how Citi wanted to pay one energy trader $100 million in 2009, in the midst of the crisis? And how later in 2009, Citigroup increased the salaries of its executives? At the same time Citigroup just couldn’t say “no” to its employees, it jacked up interest rates exorbitantly on its own credit card customers. See, it’s never a problem asking you to pay more.
From Senator Bernie Sanders, writing in the Huffington Post, we learn that Citigroup hasn’t paid federal taxes in four years.
In 2010, Bank of America set up more than 200 subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands (which has a corporate tax rate of 0.0 percent) to avoid paying U.S. taxes. It worked. Not only did Bank of America pay nothing in federal income taxes, but it received a rebate from the IRS worth $1.9 billion that year. They are not alone. In 2010, JP Morgan Chase operated 83 subsidiaries incorporated in offshore tax havens to avoid paying some $4.9 billion in U.S. taxes. That same year Goldman Sachs operated 39 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens to avoid an estimated $3.3 billion in U.S. taxes. Citigroup has paid no federal income taxes for the last four years after receiving a total of $2.5 trillion in financial assistance from the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.On and on it goes. Wall Street banks and large companies love America when they need corporate welfare. But when it comes to paying American taxes or American wages, they want nothing to do with this country. That has got to change.
I love the Senator’s next point about these companies being American in name only:
Here’s the simple truth. You can’t be an American company only when you want a massive bailout from the American people. You have also got to be an American company, and pay your fair share of taxes, as we struggle with the deficit and adequate funding for the needs of the American people. If Wall Street and corporate America don’t agree, the next time they need a bailout let them go to the Cayman Islands, let them go to Bermuda, let them go to the Bahamas and let them ask those countries for corporate welfare.
It’s a point we’ve raised before. If these companies, like Mitt Romney, want to pay foreign taxes – which often are no taxes at all – then why turn to the US government when they’re in trouble and need to be bailed out? Are they American or aren’t they?
Reuters notes that in 2011, Citigroup didn’t get any less generous with its own senior employees as it was in 2009 and 2010. Citigroup was one of 26 companies that paid its CEO more in 2011 than it paid in taxes that year:
* Citigroup, the financial services giant, with a tax refund of $144 million based on prior losses, paid CEO Vikram Pandit $14.9 million in 2011, despite an advisory vote against it by 55 percent of shareholders.
* Telecoms group AT&T paid CEO Randall Stephenson $18.7 million, but was entitled to a $420 million tax refund thanks to billions in tax savings from recent rules accelerating depreciation of assets.
* Drugmaker Abbott Laboratories paid CEO Miles White $19 million, while garnering a $586 million refund. Abbott has 64 subsidiaries in 16 countries considered by authorities to be tax havens, the institute said.
It Mitt Romney is correct that corporations are people. Then they’re clearly very greedy people.
And now we get to the fun stuff. Who used to work at Citigroup? Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew. And what did he do to avoid taxes? Lew had up to $100,000 invested in the Cayman Islands, in order to save on taxes. From Chris writing the other day:
Surprise! President Obama’s new Treasury Secretary nominee, Jack Lew, had up to $100,000 in investment in an offshore tax haven in the Cayman Islands. The investment fund “home” was a PO Box.
As I said when President Obama first nominated Jack Lew for Treasury Secretary, Lew is part of the banking problem, not the solution. Jack Lew may not have dumped as much money into offshore locations as, say, Mitt Romney, but like many others from the banking world, he was using the tax-avoidance tools mostly available to only 1% types.
Lew didn’t create the offshore fund, but you have to love thatonce again, Citi – the bank that loves taxpayer money so much it’s practically addicted to it – offers easy ways for employees to once again avoid paying their fair share to the country that kept them alive to the tune of $336.1 billion.
Who did have to pay taxes the past four years? You and me. Who didn’t get a bailout? You and me.
(RT) Smokers, beware: tobacco penalties under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act could subject millions of smokers to fees costing thousands of dollars, making healthcare more expensive for them than Americans with other unhealthy habits.
The Affordable Care Act, which critics have also called “Obamacare”, could subject smokers to premiums that are 50 percent higher than usual, starting next Jan 1. Health insurers will be allowed to charge smokers penalties that overweight Americans or those with other health conditions would not be subjected to.
A 60-year-old smoker could pay penalties as high as $5,100, in addition to the premiums, the Associated Press reports. A 55-year-old smoker’s penalty could reach $4,250. The older a smoker is, the higher the penalty will be.
Nearly one in every five U.S. adults smokes, with a higher number of low-income people addicted to the unhealthy habit. Even though smokers are more likely to develop heart disease, cancer and lung problems and would therefore require more health care, the penalties might devastate those who need help the most – including retirees, older Americans, and low-income individuals.
“We don’t want to create barriers for people to get health care coverage,” California state Assemblyman Richard Pan told AP. “We want people who are smoking to get smoking cessation treatment.”
Nearly 450,000 US residents die of smoking-related diseases each year, making the unhealthy habit a serious concern for lawmakers. One legislator is trying to criminalize smoking in his state, while others have raised taxes on cigarettes and the Obama administration has tried to inflict hefty fines upon smokers’ premiums.
Karen Pollitz, a former consumer protection regular, told AP that no insurers want to provide coverage for Americans who have been smoking for decades, and that the penalties might prompt people to abandon the habit.
“You would have the flexibility to discourage them,” she told AP.
But quitting is not easy, and charging older smokers up to three times as much as younger ones could make it difficult for them to seek care in the first place. A 60-year-old smoker charged with the penalty could be paying about $8,411 per year for health insurance, which is about 24 percent of a $35,000 income and is considered “unaffordable” under federal law.
“The effect of the smoking (penalty) allowed under the law would be that lower-incomesmokers could not afford health insurance,” said Richard Curtis, president of the Institute for Health Policy Solutions.
Ultimately, the law that is meant to make health care more affordable could have the opposite effect on older smokers at a time when smoking-related illnesses usually arise.
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(Economic Collapse) -In America tonight, tens of millions of men and women will struggle to get to sleep because they are stressed out about not making enough money even though they are working as hard as they possibly can. They are called “the working poor”, and their numbers are absolutely exploding. As a recent Gallup poll showed, Americans are more concerned about the economy than they are about anything else. But why are Americans so stressed out about our economic situation if things are supposedly getting better? Well, the truth is that unemployment is not actually going down, and the real unemployment numbers are actually much worse than what is officially being reported by the government. But unemployment is only part of the story. Most American workers are still able to find jobs, but an increasing proportion of them are not able to make ends meet at the end of the month. Our economy continues to bleed good paying middle class jobs, and to a large degree those jobs are being replaced by low income jobs. Approximately one-fourth of all American workers make 10 dollars an hour or less at this point, and we see them all around us every day. They flip our burgers, they cut our hair and they take our money at the supermarket. In many homes, both parents are working multiple jobs, and yet when a child gets sick or a car breaks down they find that they don’t have enough money to pay the bill. Many of these families have gone into tremendous amounts of debt in order to try to stay afloat, but once you get caught in a cycle of debt it can be incredibly difficult to break out of that. So what is the solution? Well, the easy answer would be that we need the U.S. economy to start producing more good paying jobs, but that is easier said than done. Our big corporations continue to ship huge numbers of good paying manufacturing jobs out of the country, and millions of Americans have been forced to scramble to find whatever work is available. Today, there are so many very talented American workers that are trapped in low wage work. According to the Working Poor Families Project, “about one-fourth of adults in low-income working families were employed in just eight occupations, as cashiers, cooks, health aids, janitors, maids, retail salespersons, waiters and waitresses, or drivers.” A lot of those people could do so much more for society, but they don’t have the opportunity. Sadly, the percentage of low paying jobs in our economy continues to increase with each passing year, so this is a problem that is only going to get worse. So don’t look down on the working poor. The good paying job that you have right now could disappear at any time and you could end up joining their ranks very soon. The following are 35 statistics about the working poor in America that will blow your mind… #1 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 146 million Americans are either “poor” or “low income”. #2 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 57 percent of all American children live in a home that is either “poor” or “low income”. #3 Back in 2007, about 28 percent of all working families were considered to be among “the working poor”. Today, that number is up to 32 percent even though our politicians tell us that the economy is supposedly recovering. #4 Back in 2007, 21 million U.S. children lived in “working poor” homes. Today, that number is up to 23.5 million. #5 In Arkansas, Mississippi and New Mexico, more than 40 percent all of working families are considered to be “low income”. #6 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent. #7 Half of all American workers earn $505 or less per week. #8 At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less. #9 Today, the United States actually has a higher percentage of workers doing low wage work than any other major industrialized nation does. #10 Median household income in the United States has fallen for four consecutive years. #11 Median household income for families with children dropped by a whopping $6,300 between 2001 and 2011. #12 The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs. 60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs. #13 Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs. Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs. #14 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before. #15 There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing. That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001. #16 Low income families spend about 8.6 percent of their incomes on gasoline. Other families spend about 2.1 percent. #17 In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance. Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance. #18 According to one survey, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time. #19 Millions of working poor families in America end up taking on debt in a desperate attempt to stay afloat, but before too long they find themselves in a debt trap that they can never escape. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the average debt burden for U.S. households that earn $20,000 a year or less “more than doubled to $26,000 between 2001 and 2010“. #20 In 1989, the debt to income ratio of the average American family was about 58 percent. Today it is up to 154 percent. #21 According to the Economic Policy Institute, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans households on average have 288 times the amount of wealth that the average middle class American family does. #22 In the United States today, the wealthiest one percent of all Americans have a greater net worth than the bottom 90 percent combined. #23 According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest Americans have more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans combined. #24 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined. #25 Sadly, the bottom 60 percent of all Americans own just 2.3 percent of all the financial wealth in the United States. #26 The average CEO now makes approximately 350 times as much as the average American worker makes. #27 Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high. Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP are near an all-time low. #28 Today, 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings. #29 The number of families in the United States living on 2 dollars a day or less more than doubled between 1996 and 2011. #30 The number of Americans on food stamps has grown from 17 million in the year 2000 to more than 47 million today. #31 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps. Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps. #32 More than one out of every four children in the United States is enrolled in the food stamp program. #33 Incredibly, a higher percentage of children is living in poverty in America today than was the case back in 1975. #34 If you can believe it, the federal government hands out money to 128 million Americans every single month. #35 Federal spending on welfare has reached nearly a trillion dollars a year, and it is being projected that it will increase by another 80 percent over the next decade.
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(TheHill) -Fifty-four House Republicans on Thursday reintroduced legislation that would terminate the IRS and replace the system of income taxes on people and corporations with a consumption tax.
The FairTax Act, from Rep. Rob Woodall (R-Ga.), would abolish the 16th Amendment, which was ratified 100 years ago this February. That amendment gives Congress the power to impose income taxes without having to spend the revenues evenly among the states. Woodall’s bill, H.R. 25, would replace the current tax system with a 23 percent consumption tax on all new goods and services. He said Thursday that this change would eliminate the need for a complicated tax code, and would be the kind of tax reform that helps reinvigorate the economy.
“The momentum is building for fundamental tax reform, and it’s fueled by the American people,” he said. “By passing the FairTax, Congress can shield middle-class Americans from the burden of the payroll tax, the largest tax burden that most American families bear.
“The FairTax would make it easier for businesses to grow and hire new workers by abolishing America’s corporate income tax, currently the highest in the world.”
Woodall argues that eliminating the corporate income tax would give companies an incentive to repatriate billions of dollars from overseas that would be subject to taxes under current law.
Specifically, the bill would repeal the payroll tax, individual and corporate income taxes, the self-employment tax, and estate and gift taxes.
It would be replaced with a 23 percent consumption tax that people living at or below the poverty rate would not have to pay. The bill would require a “probate” to be paid to all residents that is equal to the consumption tax the poor would normally pay, thus sparing them from taxes completely.
Among the 53 Republican co-sponsors are House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) and Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
The 112th Congress ended with 70 co-sponsors for Woodall’s last version of his FairTax bill.
(TheHill) -The Senate deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” will add roughly $4 trillion to the deficit when compared to current law, according to new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
The CBO determined Tuesday that the package, hammered out late Monday evening by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), would — over the next decade — come with a $3.9 trillion price tag.
The agreement, which is pending before the House after passing in an 89-8 Senate vote early Tuesday, would extend lower tax rates on annual household income under $450,000 and postpone automatic spending cuts for two months.
The extension of lower tax rates for the bulk of the nation’s taxpayers and the addition of a patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax would add roughly $3.6 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, the CBO said. Other individual, business and energy tax extenders would add another $76 billion. The extension of unemployment benefits would cost roughly $30 billion, and the so-called “doc fix” would tally another $25 billion through fiscal 2022.
The CBO says the budget agreement will lead to an overall increase in spending of about $330 billion over 10 years.
The combination of tax hikes and spending cuts that make up the fiscal cliff — if allowed to proceed — would improve the nation’s deficit, but economic experts on both sides warn its dramatic impact would push the nation back into a recession if allowed to take effect in 2013.
The CBO price tag is based on a “current law” baseline, which assumes that all components of the “fiscal cliff” will take effect, which includes a wide range of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts. Neither party in Congress is seriously considered allowing those policies to take effect unaltered.
White House officials and lawmakers who voted for the bill argue the measure would raise $620 billion in new tax revenue compared to current policy.
The new numbers come as both parties in the House grapple with whether to support the deal. The two sides met separately behind closed doors to discuss the Senate package.
In addition to indefinitely extending the George W. Bush-era income tax rates for family income up to $450,000 and individual income up to $400,000, the agreement would also set the estate tax rate at 40 percent, up from 35, and exempt inheritances below $5 million.
The deal would also increase the capital gains and dividend tax rates to 20 percent from the 15 percent level in 2012 — although both rates jumped Tuesday when the U.S. entered the new year.
The deal would also postpone automatic spending cuts known as the sequester for two months, offsetting the $24 billion cost of that delay with a combination of other spending cuts and new revenues.
The CBO estimate comes after the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated it would reduce federal revenue by $3.93 trillion over the next 10 years when compared to current law.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group that supports broad deficit-reduction reforms, estimates the entire package would increase deficits by about $4.6 trillion over the next 10 years compared to current-law projections.
(Dirk Would?) Oooooh, the Feds are coming to town.
They’re making a list, scanning it twice.
Taking your money, stripping your rights.
Ooooh, the Feds are coming to town.
(Please join in) They know that you are sleeping.
They know you aren’t awake.
With the help of corporate media,
There really is no debate.
You better not pout.
You better not resist.
You’ll be detained,
Even if you have citizenship….
Oooooooh (everyone) the Feds are coming to town.
It’s that time of year where people spend their savings, checks, run the plastic to do a little something extra for a person they love. It’s usually that time of year where people go money crazy. It’s that one day where everyone can open up their gifts and get something new. But, for a certain someone or something it’s always that time of year. That’s right nobody spends your money better than the Federal Government. Nobody spends your children’s future better than the Feds and nobody will spend their kids money better than the Feds. It’s always Christmas in Washington! So let’s take a look back at some of the most outrageous government spending of the year 2012.
Wouldn’t it be nice if all that hard work paid off? You know so you can provide security for yourself or your family. Perhaps you might want to stash it away. I don’t know, it’s your money, so shouldn’t you be able to keep it? Well you can sleep comfortably knowing that you are keeping an Iron Dome over Israel’s head. A report from Veterans News Now stated that Americans pay more into Israel’s defense than Israel taxpayers do themselves. Although Business Insider refuted that claim (talking to one Israel insider),when it’s all said and done, according to Huffington Post and Congressional Research Service, Americans are forking over $3.1 billion in aid to Israel.
The total amount for war and humanitarian assistance dispersed around the world for 2012 was $53.3 billion, according to Reuters.
Living paycheck to paycheck and pinching pennies isn’t all that bed when you know your extra dollar goes a long way. No, it literally does go a long way into the hands of dictatorship and military operations.
Government wasting your tax dollars is nothing new. Ronald Reagan shot his mouth off about it years ago but nothing has really been done about it. George W. Bush pledged that he would cut government waste but wasted around $142 million in Iraq reconstruction contracts that were either canceled or terminated. Then, there’s President Obama who vowed (like they all do) to cut government waste. Well, does this sound like cutting government waste?
1. Morocco received $27 million to learn how to make Pottery. Not only was this a failure it was stupid. Moroccans have been making pottery for hundreds of years. According to CNSNews, the program had about 10 regular students and people were mostly showing up for free lunch.
2. At a time where more and more Americans are on Foodstamps and more and more Americans are seeing food prices skyrocket, the USDA awarded a fish processor $300,000 to promote caviar.
3. $325,000 to build a robotic squirrel just so it can interact with a snake. The National Science Foundation calls it Robo-Squirrel.
4. A company in Nebraska received $505, 000 to produce beauty products for cats and dogs.
5. Institute of Museum and Library Service spent $11,000 to put on a Star Wars theme party for teenagers.
6. National Institutes of Health received $666, 905 to conduct a study that follows how people feel after they watch reruns.
7. A California school district received $90,000 to buy fancy floor mats that light up. Forget text books and writing materials get me some light up floor mats.
8. Do you like to laugh? The State Department paid an Indian-American comedy group $100,000 to do a comedy tour through India.
9. Ever curious about fruit flies? No? Me neither. The National Institute of Health got curious to the tune of $939, 771, to find out why male fruit flies are attracted to younger female fruit flies. Good thing we know!
10. Southwestern festivals were treated to Smokey Bear hot air balloons that only cost taxpayers $49,477.
So you see when you’d like to pay the heating bill, perhaps waste a little bit of your own money, you need not to worry. The oversized blimp of our Federal government is coming down your chimney to do it for you. Except it’s not just once a year.
Written by: Derek Wood
Boehner has come under attack by members of his own party in recent weeks. In November, Digital Journal reported that Bill Kristol, a Fox News commentator, appeared on Fox News Sunday and said:
“You know what? It won’t kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires. It really won’t, I don’t think. I don’t really understand why Republicans don’t take Obama’s offer to raise taxes for everyone above $250,000.”
Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss stated:
“‘I care more about my country’ than Norquist and a no tax hike pledge.”
Another Digital Journal report stated Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker, along with GOP Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and John McCain of Arizona, also broke party lines, rejecting the no tax hike idea.
According to Politico, Boehner and President Obama met at the White House on Thursday to discuss negotiations. They also spoke by phone on Friday. Those discussions, and the fact that this is the first time Boehner has offered any tax hike as part of a fiscal cliff proposal, may signal progress towards a deal, and certainly indicates a softening of Boehner’s anti-tax increase stance.
Part of Boehner’s deal also asks for a long-term increase in the eligibility age for Medicare, as well as for a lower costs-of-living adjustment for Social Security recipients. The President has already proposed roughly $600 billion in spending reductions over the next 10 years, including $350 billion in Medicare and other health care savings. He has insisted however that any deal aimed at avoiding the fiscal cliff would have to include a tax hike on the wealthy.
